5

1- 194
194
RIES
DIA
 Diaries 19411945

Translated by
andrew Bromfield,
rose France
and anthony Hippisley

arGUMeNTY i FaKTY
aiF KiND HearT CHariTaBLe FOUNDaTiON
MOsCOW 2016
This book is a genuine historical document. The journalists of the Russian Weekly Argumenty
i fakty have gathered together all the surviving diaries written by Russian children during the
Second World War that it has been possible to find, and now, for the first time in seventy years,
these diaries have been brought together in a single volume. They are horrifying and honest
testimonies of the fate that befell millions of little citizens of the great Russian nation, and of
the things they were forced to experience. We have produced this book in order to honour
their memory and to preserve these manuscripts for posterity. More than half of the thirty-five
diaries included in this collection are published here for the first time.

The diaries have been abridged for this collection. The Russian text preserves the original spelling
and punctuation used by the authors of the diaries, and this is reflected where possible in the
English translation.

Editorial board:
Nikolai Zyatkov (Director of the Editorial Board), Evgeny faktorovich (Head of Compilation), Tatyana
Kuznetsova (Editor), Polina Ivanushkina (Author of Prefaces and Compiler), Indira Kodzasova, Polina
Molotkova, Ruslan Novikov, Marina Mishunkina, Margarita Shirokova, Olesya Korobko and Sergey
Golubev.

Translators: Andrew bromfield, Rose france, Anthony hippisley

The editors would like to thank Arkady Romanovich Rotenberg for his help in publishing this book.
Without his help, this project might never have come to fruition.

D38. Childrens book of the War: Diaries 19411945. Moscow: Argumenty i fakty, AIf Kind heart
Charitable foundation, 2016.
ISbN 978-5-85272-259-1
94(47+57)<1941/1945>(093.3)
63.3(2)62214
38

Protected by copyright law. No part of this

book may be reproduced without the written
permission of the author(s). Any attempt to
breach copyright law will be prosecuted.
Argumenty i fakty, 2016
English language translation Andrew bromfield, 2016
English language translation Rose france, 2016
ISbN 978-5-85272-259-1 English language translation Anthony hippisley, 2016
 Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Foreword .by .Mikhail .Gorbachev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Foreword .by .Daniel .Granin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1 . .Leningrad: .The .Siege . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

The Diary of Tanya Savicheva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

The Diary of Yura Ryabinkin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
The Diary of Tanya Rudykovskaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
The Diary of Lera Igosheva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
The Diary of Tanya Vassoevich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81
The Diary of Galya Zimnitskaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The Diary of Kapa Voznesenskaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
The Diary of Misha Tikhomirov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131
The Diary of Marusya Yeryomina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149
The Diary of Borya Kapranov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
The Diary of Lena Mukhina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175
The Diary of Yura Utekhin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
The Diary of Mayya Bubnova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
The Diary of Valya Peterson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
The Diary of Sasha Morozov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
The Diary of Kolya Vasilev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
The Diary of Alla Kiselyova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
The Diary of Lyuda Ots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

2 . .The .Prisoners: .Ghetto .and .Concentration .Camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

The Diary of Tamara Lazerson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

The Diary of Masha Rolnikayte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

3 . .In .the .Third .Reich: .Diaries .of .the .Abducted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288

The Diary of Vasya Baranov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

The Diary of Liza Veyde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
The Diary of Borya Andreev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .315
4. Face to Face with the Enemy: The Front and Occupation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

The Diary of Roma Kravchenko-Berezhnoy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

The Diary of Anya Aratskaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
The Diary of Zoya Khabarova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
The Diary of Volodya Borisenko. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
The Diary of Zhenya Vorobyova. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

5. Behind the Line of Fire: The Home Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

The Diary of Volodya Chivilikhin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

The Diary of Kolya Ustinov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
The Diary of Natasha Kolesnikova. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
The Diary of The Timur Squad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
The Diary of Alla Rzhevskaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
The Diary of Vladik Berdnikov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
The Diary of Sasha Vedin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .471

Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
 7

IntroductIon
In Russia, World War II, or the Great Patriotic War as it is known, is often discussed
in terms of grandiose concepts such as heroism, patriotism or Motherland. But this
book is an attempt to move away from this standard approach to wartime memories and
to explore aspects of the Russian wartime experience that have rarely, until now, seen the
light of day.
Very little is known throughout the world of how Russias children experienced the
war. Even in Russia, knowledge is restricted to just a few iconic stories: the story of
Tanya Savicheva, the author of one of the most famous diaries of World War II, who
lived through the Leningrad siege only to die in 1944, aged 14 years, and the stories of a
handful of heroic pioneers.
People in Russia have all heard stories of children putting out incendiary bombs on
rooftops, digging up potatoes and working on allotments, writing down letters to relatives
dictated by wounded soldiers in field hospitals, and knitting woollen mittens. But they are,
perhaps, less aware of how war affected the daily lives of children, how children coped
with the havoc wrought by war: hunger, devastation, the death of beloved friends, parents
and relatives. Some of those who remember what happened are still alive and can, even
now, tell us of their experiences. But no account speaks quite as directly and truthfully as
a personal diary written at the time. That is why we have decided to concentrate on this
genre.
These documents have never before been published in one collection, either in
Soviet times or in the post-Soviet era. For the staff of the newspaper Argumenty i fakty
who first devised this project, bringing this material together was a profound revelation.
We hope that our readers will be as moved by it as we were ourselves. We have gathered
together all the material we could documents from archives and family collections and
books already in print. In the end, we managed to collect thirty-five diaries written by
Soviet children. Every one of them is unique. Some were written behind enemy lines, in
occupied territory, in the ghettoes or in concentration camps, some in Leningrad when the
city was under siege, some in Nazi Germany. Thirty-five different stories of war.
Hugely varied in tone, these accounts are striking in the way they manage to combine
the big with the little; serious themes with more everyday concerns. Today I worked
on my algebra. The city of Oryol has fallen. They are minor epics works with the epic
scope of War and Peace written on the pages of school exercise books.
It is extraordinary how children continue to be preoccupied by the details of day-to-
day life, and how clearly the pulse of this life can still be felt, even under enemy occupation
or during the siege of Leningrad. A young girl describes using lipstick for the first time, a
boy writes of his first crush. All the children without exception write about books: Jules
 8

Verne and Gorky, the books on the school curriculum and the books they read at home,
books from public and family libraries. They write about their friendships and, of course,
they write about love: those first, timid emotions, which are sometimes difficult to confide
to anyone even a secret diary.
As a rule, the children who feature in this book are going through everything for the first
time: whether keeping a diary, or living through a war. They do not have the experience
of older generations; age has not yet toughened them. Everything they do is spontaneous
and genuine. This is what makes their testimonies so valuable. These are the most honest
accounts possible of what it feels like to live through war, accounts of personal experience
that hold a mirror up to the wider world.
The diaries collected here vary hugely not only in what they contain, but in how they
were written. Some were written on the torn-off pages of calendars, some in notebooks, on
standard exercise books with calico binding and in school notebooks on squared paper.
Some were written in little notebooks no larger than a childs hand. Some are long, some
are short; some detailed and some less so. Some have been preserved in archives and
museums, and others by the family members of our readers.
One reader of Argumenty i fakty, when he heard that we were collecting childrens
wartime diaries, sat down and wrote his childhood memoirs over the course of a single
weekend, and brought them in to us. We were struck by the thought that, perhaps, he had
never once been asked to tell anyone what it had really been like all those years ago, in
wartime. He had never before had a chance to share those precious, painful memories of
childhood.
This project is intended to encourage a sense of shared belonging and mutual
connection. The aim of this book is not only to show war through the eyes of children,
refracted through the innocent, often poignant perception of young people forced to be
old before their time, but to find a thread of connection, to draw together the hearts of
those living today with the hearts of those who survived the most terrible catastrophe
of the twentieth century. Some may not have survived, but they stood firm, they never
surrendered. These young people, members of a generation still represented among the
readers of our paper today, witnessed the most terrible chapter of our history, a time that
sometimes seems like the distant past, sometimes like only yesterday.
This thread of understanding will hold us together. And perhaps it may even help us to
safeguard peace, which as we all know, is such a fragile thing.

Editorial Board
of the Russian Weekly
Argumenty i fakty
 9

Foreword by mikhail gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev
Former President of the USSr
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

As the events of the World War II recede further into the past, memories of that
harsh and difficult time grow ever more valuable. All the more so when these memories
are the eyewitness accounts of children who experienced at first hand the unthinkable
sufferings, horrors and inhumanity of those years, as well as the many acts of self-
sacrifice and heroism.
Such accounts make up the contents of this book, Children of War.
When the war began, I was just ten years old. I clearly remember a messenger
galloping in on horseback into the midst of our village fete, bearing the terrible news.
A meeting was called in the centre of the village, and everyone gathered to listen to the
announcement made by the Soviet government.
Many things have happened in the course of my long life, which have since been
forgotten. But I could never forget a single thing that happened to me during those
terrible war years.
The army began to mobilise. I witnessed farewell ceremonies for my father and
other local men who were going off to fight. The whole village would gather to see them
off. And then there was the agonising wait for news from the front. All the young boys
expected the invaders to be driven out at any moment. Instead, notifications of death
began to arrive. The Soviet army was forced to retreat. Soon, there was nobody left in
the village but old people, women and children. It was all much worse, and much more
dramatic than anyone had expected. It was the beginning of a tragedy.
I remember how the women from the neighbourhood would gather in our house
after a hard days work, and listen as I read out the news reports from Pravda my father
had a subscription to the paper, and it was still being delivered to our village. People
suffered greater and still greater distress. Our region experienced an exceptionally hard
winter. We had to survive somehow, to get hold of fuel and sustenance by whatever
means possible, to try to save our cattle. Nevertheless, famine set in. Then the Germans
came into our part of the country, and we found ourselves under occupation. This was
the hardest time of all.
 10

Even after we had driven out the Fascists, we faced new privations. In those days
there was a famous slogan: Everything for the Front! These were by no means empty
words. Children and adults alike worked and went hungry, improvised clothing out of
whatever they had to hand. There was one compensation, however; letters were now
getting through from the front again, distinctive letters folded into triangles from those
who were still alive and continuing to fight. At my mothers request, I would write down
her replies to my fathers letters, which she dictated to me. We all understood that no
matter how hard it might be for us, the soldiers at the front were facing greater hardships
and challenges. We tried to offer words of support, and hopes that victory would soon
be ours, and we would be together again.
And when, at last, we began to receive reports that the German invaders had been
beaten back, first in one area and then another, and that Soviet troops were advancing
westwards, our joy knew no bounds.
I was a witness to all of this, along with the entire nation.
We all have a duty to hold on to the memory of these little heroes, their deprivations
which no child should be called upon to suffer, the part they played in their countrys
victory. These children of the war had to grow up quickly. They worked on the home
front, in factories and in collective farms, carrying out the same tasks as adults. The
bloody turmoil of that war left its mark on each and every one of us. Who could fail to
be moved to tears by the diaries of children who lived through the Leningrad Siege?
These letters from the war are both a reminder and a warning to us all, and
particularly to politicians of the world.
We live as long as we remember.
 11

Foreword by daniel Granin

Daniel Granin, writer

Veteran of the Great Patriotic War
Honoured Citizen of St Petersburg

Children experience war differently from adults. They have a different way of
recording that war with all it involves, all its horrors and upheavals. It is probably
because children do not have hindsight. They are naive but at the same time they are
honest, particularly with themselves.
War childrens diaries testify to amazing powers of observation and ruthless honesty
that are often impossible for a grown person. Children noticed facts of everyday life
and signs of war more keenly than the adults, they responded better to all the changes
taking place around them. Their diaries are more down to earth. For this reason their
testimony and the evidence they provide are much more important to the historian
than the diaries of adults.
One of the most harrowing chapters in this book is the very first. The children in
besieged Leningrad experienced the worst horrors of all, as it seems to me. There were
bombing raids, artillery shelling, darks streets and courtyards because at night there was
no street lighting. Explosions of bombs and shells were the visible and tangible death to
which they could never become accustomed.
And yet the human deaths surrounding them on the streets and in the houses, these
deaths they accepted more calmly than did the adults, they did not experience such
terror and despair, perhaps simply because they did not understand it or relate it to
themselves.
But children had their own special terrors. And it is clear that the worst of all was
hunger. It was much harder for them to come to terms with it than for adults because
they had not yet learned how to cope mentally with it, how to steel themselves, and
for that reason they suffered all the more. That is why so many lines and pages of
these diaries describe thoughts of food and hunger pains and consequent pangs of
conscience
What did these diaries mean to those who wrote them? Almost every diary contains
phrases like my best friend, the only one who can help me. You didnt write in your
diary, you talked to it. There was nothing on earth closer than that exercise book in its
 12

calico cover, that sketch pad, that tiny album. And that intimacy, that need, often arose
on the very first day of the war where many of the diaries published in this book begin.
Contact with the childs world of this war years is for me a very personal thing.
When Ales Adamovich and I were working on The Blockade Book we realised that
it was precisely in childrens diaries that the feelings and behaviour of the besieged were
recorded most faithfully. It was not a simple matter to hunt down those diaries, but
nevertheless we did manage to find some strikingly detailed ones. It turns out that as a
rule the writer of the diary did not expect to survive, but at the same time realised that
the Leningrad blockade was something exceptional, and wanted to record his or her
testimony to it.
At a time when the most fundamental human values are coming into question, when
torchlight processions of Nazis are once again marching across Europe, the testimony
of these childrens diaries is of crucial importance. They bring us back to ourselves, to
the land where we were born And if some people today are left cold by the testimony
of adults then perhaps the words of children will get through to them. And for todays
children the voices of people their own age will mean more than those of grown-ups
preaching to them from on high. After all, its one thing to have a teaching standing at
the blackboard telling you about the war, but quite another when its your own school
friend telling you. Even across a gap of seventy years.
We all of course dread the thought of another war. We do not want it. That dread
is even more powerful when you read the diaries of children who lived through the last
one. And you cant help thinking, have we really had only seven decades without war?
Only seven decades of peace? Its so little.
 13

Acknowledgements
the usual place for acknowledgements is at the end of a book. But this book is an unusual
one, and we would like to mention, straight away, all those who have made such a tremendous
contribution to the success of this project. these are the people who discovered diaries written by
children during the war, those who looked after them and kept them safe, and all those who worked
tirelessly to bring about the publication of these unique documents. we would like to thank each
and every one of them.
our thanks to the staff of Argumenty i fakty, who searched the length and breadth of our
vast country for any surviving diaries written by children in wartime, unearthing them in museums,
archives and in the hands of relatives, and sometimes even locating the authors themselves. thanks
to the many people who helped with the production and printing of this book: Alina klimenko in
st. Petersburg, marina maslennikova in Perm, olga momot in Bryansk, Victoria lebedinets in
Vladivostok, Vera matveeva in Ulyanovsk, natalia Popova in Arkhangelsk, olga Zaporozhtseva in
Volgograd, natalia dryomova in simferopol, and Aleksandr kolesnichenko, Julia shigareva, Vitaly
tseplyaev, ekaterina Bychkova, daria Buravchikova, denis khalaimov, natalia Antipova, Vladimir
kozhemjakin, konstantin kudryashov, maria Pozdnyakova, olga shablinskaya, natalia Bojarkina,
natalya teplova, sergey dubovitskiy, evgenya kvasova, elizaveta Pakhomova, Victor Vorobyev and
all the employees of the Argumenty i Fakty kind Heart charitable Foundation. our thanks to Andrey
Baturin, deputy director general of Public communications for the llc stroygazmontazh, who lent
his support to this project. His outstanding professionalism and close interest and involvement in all
our ideas were an invaluable help to us.
we would like to thank natalya timakova, Press Attache to the Russian Prime minister, for the
genuine support she gave to children of war and for her heartfelt involvement in our project.
we are also grateful to Andrei tsybulin, head of the Press service and Information office for
the Russian President, for his invaluable help in bringing children of war to millions of readers
throughout the world.
these diaries were written in Russian, and it was enormously important for us to convey to
readers without any knowledge of Russian the precise words and intonations used by the children to
tell of their experiences: their pain and tears at the death of loved ones; their terror at falling bombs;
their joy at victory. this would not have been possible without the highly professional work of the
talented British translators Andrew Bromfield, Rose France and Anthony Hippisley in preparing the
english translation.
A special word of thanks to the many representatives of archives, museums and publishing
houses who helped with the publication of these diaries: sergei kurnosov, director of the state
memorial museum of the defence and siege of leningrad in st. Petersburg, Irina muravyova, director
of the Research and exhibition section of the state memorial museum of the defence and siege of
leningrad in st Petersburg, Vladimir taradin, director of the central Archive of Historical and Political
 14

Documents in St. Petersburg, Andrey Sorokin, Director of the Russian State Archive of Social and
Political History in Moscow, Valeria Kagramanova, Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary
History of Russia in Moscow, Victoria Kokhenderfer, Chief Curator of the Battle of Stalingrad Museum
in Volgograd, Larisa Turilina, Director of the State Archives of the Bryansk Region in Bryansk, Bella
Kurkova, Deputy Chief Editor of the Kultura Studio of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting
Company in St Petersburg, Alexander Zhikarentsev, Chief Editor of the St Petersburg Branch of the
LLC Azbuka Atticus Publishing Group, Leonid Amirkhanov, Chief Executive of the Ostrov Publishing
House in St Petersburg, Mikhail Sapego, Chief Executive of the Krasny Matros Publishing House in
St Petersburg, Sergei Nikolaev, Director-General of Algoritm Publishers in Moscow, the Moscow-
based historian Pavel Polyan, compiler of the series On the Margins of War and Scrolls from the
Ashes Testimonies of a Catastrophe, the St Petersburg-based journalist and researcher Sergey
Glezerov, author of Eyewitness Accounts of the Siege, Valentin Verkhovtsev in Arkhangelsk, Natalya
Adamovich-Shuvagina in Minsk, Belarus, and Daniil Granin in St Petersburg.
We would like to express our gratitude to the family members and friends of the authors of
these war chronicles for looking after these diaries so carefully and for allowing us to print them.
Thanks to Nina Tikhomirova in Budapest, Hungary, Inna Chernomorskaya in St Petersburg, Andrey
Vassoevich in St Petersburg, Tatyana Musina in Moscow, Marina Borisenko in Moscow, Lyudmila
Polezhaeva in Apatity, Olga Baronova in Bryansk, Yury Andreev in St Petersburg and Irina Novikova
in St Petersburg.
We are also, of course, greatly indebted to those of the young diarists who managed to survive
the war and to keep their diaries intact, and who have now given us permission to publish them:
Natalya Kolesnikova in Moscow, Zoya Dobrokhotova (Khabarova) in Kokoshkino, Novaya Moskva,
Maria Rolnikayta in St Petersburg, Tamara Lazerson-Rostovskaya in Haifa, Israel, Vladislav Berdnikov
in Perm, Valeria Trotsenko (Igosheva) in Vladivostok, Alexander Vedin in Ulyanovsk, Tatyana
Grigorova Rudykovskaya in St Petersburg, Yury Utekhin in Moscow and Nikolay Ustinov in Kholmsk.
Our heartfelt thanks to them.
The vast majority of these diaries are by authors who have not survived to the present day, and
who never had the chance to see this book in print.
May they never be forgotten.
 15

I left my childhood not like all the others,

But passed through the blaze of a shell-blast
Among the young oats, silver and tender,
A landmine carved up the soft earth.

In spring, the earth was sown again,

The bomb-craters brimmed with rainwater;
But how hard, to grow up out of childhood
When you have been crippled by war.

Gleb Yeremeev
Leningrad:
the Siege
 18

Children of the Underworld

A little boy is drawing a picture. He is only three years old and his drawing consists of
scribbles all around the edge of the page, and, right in the middle, a small oval shape.
What have you drawn? asks his teacher.
The war, replies the boy. The thing in the middle is a loaf of bread. Thats all I know.
The drawing is dated 23 May 1942, and the name of the little boy is Sasha Ignatev. He was
one of 400,000 children left in Leningrad after 8 September 1941 when the blockade cut off the
city completely from the outside world. Nine hundred days later, when the Red Army finally
managed to breach the blockade, they found out that only half of those 400,000 people were still
alive.
Valentina Kozlovskaya was an employee in one of the nurseries in Leningrad during the
siege. The boys in her charge were aged between three and four years old. In the winter of 1943,
Valentina made a cloth cat from various rags and scraps of material. This cat became a great
favourite with the children; at the sound of the air-raid siren it would always be the first thing
they worried about. Only the most obedient child, or the smallest and weakest among them,
would have the honour of taking the cat to the air-raid shelter. One of the children who received
this honour was a little boy called Igor Khitsun. While on the way to the shelter, he was hit by
shrapnel from a German bomb, which shattered his leg below the knee. The shock numbed the
pain and he did not fully understand what had happened to him. Miss, miss, he asked, will
they sew my leg back on again quickly? Look how quickly you managed to sew a whole cat
In the most terrible winter of all, from 1942 to 1943, things had been bleaker still. Many
people in the city felt that they were living in some sort of terrible underworld. We had a hundred
children with us, recalls a former employee at one of the citys childrens homes for pre-school
children, They would sit silently, for hours, without moving. If they saw anybody smile, they
would lose their tempers, cry and have tantrums. It was terrible to see the children at table,
to watch how they ate. They would crumble up their bread into tiny crumbs and hide them in
matchboxes. Children would leave their bread till last, as the greatest treat, and would take
pleasure in making one piece of bread last for several hours, looking at it all the time as if it was
some unheard-of marvel.
But there were moments of light in the gloom. Many people of Leningrad remember the circus
performer Ivan Narkevich. An invalid who had not been sent to the front, Ivan had managed
to keep hold of his two performing dogs. In April 1942 he began to go round the citys schools
and nurseries with his dogs, putting on shows for the children. With his help, the children would
forget for a while all the terrible things that had happened forget how they had seen bodies
of loved ones who had died being taken away on sledges, forget their fear of the bombing raids.
The children would forget for a time. They needed to forget. But we can never forgive those
who say that Leningrad ought to have been surrendered to the Germans. Not if we are to honour
the memory of those children who were starving and watching their parents die.
 20

Before the war, the Savichev family lived on the Second Line of Leningrads Vasilevsky
Island, No. 13, apartment 6. This large, friendly family had been badly affected by the vagaries
of fortune even before the war. The father of the family had been a Nepman one of the small
businessmen who had become rich during the years of the New Economic Policy in the 1920s,
but who had been hit hard by the change in Party policy in the 1930s. He had run a bakery
and confectioners before losing everything. Because of this family connection with what later
became an undesirable class of person, the younger Savichevs did not have the right to study
at an institute or to enter the Komsomol, the Communist youth organisation, membership of
which opened many doors in professional and public life. However, they lived happily. As a
baby, Tanya would sleep in a linen basket under the lampshade on the table, with the whole
family gathered round. All that was left of the family after the siege was Tanyas notebook. It is
the shortest diary in this book.
It is written without exclamation marks and without even any full stops; only the letters of
the alphabet are printed in black ink along the sides of the pages, each serving as a memorial
to a family member. On the page marked with the Russian letter Zh Tanya noted the
death of her older sister Zhenya, who died in the arms of another sister, Nina, and who, as
she was dying, begged the family to get her a coffin, something difficult to find in those days, so
that the earth wouldnt get in her eyes. On the page with the letter B Tanya recorded
the death of her grandmother (babushka), who told the family not to bury her straight away,
so that they could continue to use her bread ration. There are also entries commemorating
Tanyas brother, Lyoka, her two uncles and her mother, who died last of all. After all the other
members of the Savichev family had died, 11-year-old Tanya put the candles from her parents
wedding, together with the note book, which had once been her sister Ninas drawing book, and
which Tanya herself had later used to record the death of her family, into an enamelled Palekh
box. Then, orphaned and emaciated, she made her way to a distant relative, her Aunt Dusya.
This aunt promptly sent her to a childrens home which was later evacuated to the village of
Shatki in the Gorky (now Nizhegorodskaya) Region. There, Tanyas slow decline continued
for several months: she suffered from spinal tuberculosis, dystrophy and scurvy. She died in
July 1944 of intestinal tuberculosis. Tanya never knew that the Savichev family had not all
died, and that Nina (whose indelible pencil she had used to write the final line of her short
diary), and her brother, Mikhail, both of whom had been evacuated, had survived. She never
knew that her sister Nina returned to Leningrad after the city had been liberated, found the
Palekh box in her Aunt Dusyas house, and gave Tanyas notebook to a museum. She never
knew that her name was spoken at the Nuremberg Trial, and would later become an enduring
symbol of the Siege of Leningrad. She never knew that Edith Piaf would later sing a song called
The Ballad of Tanya Savicheva, or that astronomers would name a small planet after her
(2127-TANYA), or that the words she wrote would be carved into a granite monument.
But we know all this. We know, and we remember. The nine pages of Tanya Savichevas
diary are short enough to fit onto a single page of this book. But they are just the beginning.
 21

Zhenya died 28 Dec at 12 a.m. 1941

Grandma died 25 Jan at 3 p.m. 1942
Lyoka died 17 March at 5 a.m. 1942
Uncle Vasya died 13 April at 2 a.m. 1942
Uncle Lyosha 10 May at 4 p.m. 1942
Mama 13 May 7.30 a.m. 1942
The Savichevs have died.
Everybody has died.
Only Tanya is left.
 22

Tanya wrote this chronicle of the deaths of the Savichev family

using an eye pencil belonging to her older sister Nina.

Her diary, the shortest text in this book, has become a symbol of the Leningrad Siege.
TASS.
 24

Yura Ryabinkin, who lived in Leningrad during the war with his mother and sister,
not only faced a struggle with conditions imposed on everyone by the siege; he also faced
a struggle with his own self and with his conscience, when forced to share every last scrap
of the little food available with his closest relatives. In the blue cloth-bound notebook that
served as a diary Yury left an honest account of this tragic inner conflict.
Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich, who published extracts from Yuras diary in The
Blockade Book, managed to track down Yuras younger sister (by eight years), Irina (or
Ira), in the 1980s. We, too, were able to speak to her in 2015. Irina Ivanovna worked
for forty-five years as a schoolteacher of Russian language and literature. She remembers
watching her mother, whose mental faculties was already badly impaired by exhaustion and
malnutrition, packing a suitcase, after the Ryabinkins had finally been given the chance to
be evacuated. But Yura was never to leave Leningrad. He stayed behind.
Irina Ivanovna remembers the last glimpse she had of her brother. He was leaning
against a trunk, supported by a stick, without the strength to walk. Irinas mother used the
last of her strength taking her daughter to Vologda. All the way, she sobbed, Weve left Yura
behind. Yuras still back there. She died just a few hours later, at the station, before her
daughters eyes.
Irina now treasures her brothers diary, and a glass inkpot that belonged to him. She
also nurses the slender hope that Yura may still be alive, and was prevented perhaps by
feelings of pride, hurt and grievance from finding Irina in the childrens home in Vologda
where she was placed, or later, after she had been taken out of the city by her aunt.
It is still not entirely clear how Yurys diary fell into the hands of strangers. On one of
the anniversaries of the lifting of the blockade of Leningrad, the Smena newspaper sent an
appeal round to schools for historical documents and artefacts from the time of the siege.
One girl brought in a diary written during the siege by a boy she had never met, called
Yura Ryabinkin. The diary had been in the girls family. Before that, it had been with her
grandmother, who lived in Vologda. Yuras sister Irina happened to read the extracts from
his diary in Smena, and travelled to Vologda to meet the girls grandmother. We only had
a short conversation, she says. It turned out that she had been working as a nurse in a
hospital. When Yura was dying and no longer able to speak, he made a movement with his
head, to show her that something was hidden under the pillow. It was the blue notebook.
The nurse took it. As for Yura, it is not known what became of him.
As time went on, I was beset by a sense of guilt towards Yura, Irina Ivanovna says,
through tears. Now it is with me all the time, just like his blue notebook, she says. And I
live with a constant burden, too. After all, it is my duty to be a human being worthy of the
name. It is my duty to show that I am worthy of those people friends and family who
died during the siege. Because the price paid for my own life was too high
 25

22 June 1941. All night I was kept awake by a droning noise outside the window.
When it finally died down, towards morning, it was already getting light. At the
moment, the Leningrad nights are short, light and moonlit, but when I looked out
of the window, I saw several searchlights in the sky. I fell asleep in the end. When I
woke it was already after ten in the afternoon, or rather morning. I dressed quickly,
washed, had something to eat and set off to the garden of the Palace of Pioneers1.
When I got out onto the street, I saw something unexpected. At the gates of
our house, I saw a yard-keeper with a gas mask and a red armband. It was the
same at every gateway. The policemen also had gas masks and there were radio
announcements at all the crossroads2. Something told me that the whole city was
in a state of alert.
When I got to the Palace of Pioneers, I only found two people playing chess
there While I was setting out the chess pieces on the board, I heard something
out of the ordinary; I turned round and saw a whole group of people crowded round
a young boy. I listened in to what he was saying, and froze.
The boy was talking excitedly: Yesterday, at 4 oclock in the morning, German
planes bombed Kiev, Zhitomir, Sebastopol and other locations, he was saying.
Molotov3 has made an announcement on the radio. Were at war with Germany!
I was so amazed I had to sit down. I couldnt believe the news. I would never
have thought something like this could happen. Germany! Germany had gone to
war with us! So that was why everyone had gas masks. My head was spinning. I
couldnt take anything in. I played three games of chess. Oddly enough, I won all
three. Then I made my way home. I stopped near a loudspeaker and listened to
Molotovs announcement. When I got back, Mother was the only one at home. She
had already heard the news
28 June. Today I was working at the Palace of Pioneers again, helping to build
an air-raid shelter. It was hellish work. We all learnt how to be stonemasons today.
I bashed my hands to pieces with the hammer, theyre all covered in scratches now.
The next shift came in to relieve us quite early at three oclock. So we worked for
four and a half hours, but it was some work!!!
I went from the Palace straight to see Mother. Mother is anxious, and in very
low spirits. They are starting to evacuate people because now theres a possibility
of chemical warfare. I took five roubles and went off to the canteen. After that I
went home. A woman came; she was taking down the names of all children under
thirteen. She took down Iras name. The house officer ordered Nina to guard the
1
The Pioneers was a Communist youth organisation catering to children and young people of 1015 years old. Each
large Soviet city would have a Palace of Pioneers where activities for young people would take place.
2
By 1941 there were more than a thousand loudspeakers at various strategic points on the streets and squares of Leningrad
over which radio broadcasts were relayed.
3
Vyacheslav Molotov (18901986), Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs 19391949, broke the news of Operation
Barbarossa, Germanys invasion of the Soviet Union.
 26

gate from half past nine to three. He also told us that if there was an alert, we should
run to Khamadulins apartment on the ground floor. But it isnt safe there, all the
same. We cant keep ourselves safe from a high-explosive bomb or from an air blast.
The blast would demolish the house, and wed be buried alive by the rubble in the
cellar. A chemical bomb would be even worse.
29 June. Worked at the Palace of Pioneers, helping to build the air-raid shelter.
Before that, I was on Lassalle Square [now Arts Square], loading sand. But in fact
there wasnt much work to be done. The boys were making models of Hitlers ugly
mug out of sand and then bashing it with spades. I joined in, too. At the Palace, they
had us hauling sand and bricks again. I left at six oclock. When I got home there was
a surprise waiting for me.
Ira ran to meet me at the door, shouting, Look what Mama got me! Not you!
She didnt get anything for you! I went into the dining room and saw a new sailor
suit and a doll for Ira laid out on the sofa. And there was a new pair of boots, also
for Ira, on the table.
Then Mother handed me a note. In a complete daze, I unfolded it. It was a
declaration, addressed to the Military Commisariat, announcing that Mother and I
were enlisting as volunteers in the Red Army.
It turned out that Mother was at a Communist Party meeting in the morning
and all the Party members decided to enlist in the Red Army. Not one member
refused. At first, I felt something close to pride. Then I began to feel a bit afraid, but
finally the pride won out over the fear
30 June. I went to the Fund. More news: they probably wont take me in the
army. I am too short, and I have pleurisy, too. And because I feel ill, and the pleurisy
is affecting me, they probably wont make me work at the Palace of Pioneers any
more either: theyll send me to a camp.
118 July. I went to the cinema with Dodya. We saw The Boxers. We went to
the zoo and played billiards and chess For some reason I had a bad pain in my
chest. Ive started to cough. I am drenched in sweat, day and night It looks as
if Ostrov has been taken, as now people are talking about a Pskov Sector. What
front is Voroshilov in command of? Mother was ordered to the Baltiisky Station
from there she is being sent to Kingisepp to dig trenches.1 I went with her to the
station.
19 July. In the evening when we got back home, Tina came to see us unexpectedly
from Shlisselburg. She is going to be head doctor of the hospital. We agreed that if
anything should happen to Mother, she will take in me and Ira They are saying
1
In June 1941, the Leningrad City Soviet issued a decree mobilising all able-bodied citizens between the ages of sixteen
and fifty (men) and sixteen and forty-five (women, without young children) for civil defence work. This included digging
trenches and anti-tank ditches.
 27

Nobody has been able to establish for certain how Yura died, and
Yuras younger sister still believes that he may have survived, that his
life may have been spared. Eight-year-old Ira saw her brother for the
last time early in 1942.
Photo from The Blockade Book by Ales Adamovich and Daniel Granin.
 28

that classes will be held this year (for the 8th, 9th and 10th grades) but Im not sure
I believe it. The important thing is to stay alive.
JulyAugust. This looks like it will be the most difficult and most dangerous war
we have ever faced. Victory will come at a heavy price.
Read A Nest of Gentlefolk1.
Played chess with David.
Mother gave me money which I spent on a bowl of soup (borshch) and a bowl
of semolina, with butter, at the Palace of Labour canteen. Then I came home. At
home I learned how to checkmate with a knight and a bishop
26 and 27 August. Novgorod was taken several days ago. Leningrad is in danger
of being cut off from the rest of the USSR
30 August Mother wants to try to get me into the special naval school. But I
know the medical board wont pass me, so Im refusing. Its not easy to give up on
my dream of going to sea, but what else can I do? Theres no point in trying. Im
feeling pessimistic.
31 August, 1 September. No classes in school today (1 September). Nobody
knows when there will be any classes. From 1 September well only be able to buy
food using ration cards. Even matches and salt will be rationed. Famine is on its
way. Slowly, perhaps, but surely.
Leningrad is surrounded! German paratroopers have landed in the area around
Ivanovskaya Station and cut off our city from the rest of the USSR
Tomorrow was supposed to be my 16th birthday. Me 16!
2 September. Nothing special happened on my birthday.
Mother gave me five roubles to spend at the canteen. I decided to give myself
a treat. I went to the shop and bought a chess book. Then I went to the canteen
but there was nothing cheap left. Mother came back in the evening though and
brought me two pies. She made some soup too, so I ate some of that. So now Ive
had enough to eat and Im happy!
5 and 6 September. Mother is still wanting to get me into the naval school, but
I dont want to go. In any case, the school wont accept me because (1) I have
poor eyesight, and (2) I have pleural adhesions in my right lung, and other things
besides. I dont see the point getting carried away with big dreams, just to see my
hopes dashed.
The Germans are bombarding Leningrad with long-range artillery. You can
hear the shells exploding. Yesterday a shell fell on a building on Glazovskaya Street
[now Konstantin Zaslonov Street] and demolished half a building. Finkelshteyn
and Nikitin went to look and told me about it. A shell fell somewhere in a square.
There were lots of dead and wounded. Today, there was another bombardment
1
A novel by Ivan Turgenev.
 29

towards evening. You can still hear the thump of shells from over by the Moscow
Station, beyond it, on the other side. The women in the queues are saying that
Hitler has promised an end to the war by 7 September that is, by tomorrow. But
its just a stupid rumour. They were saying the same thing before, only then they
were saying it would be over by 2 August.
8 September. A day full of alarm, anxiety and upsets. Ill tell everything as it
happened from the beginning.
In the morning, Mother came running in from work and said that she was being
sent off to work on a state farm in Oranienbaum. She would have to leave me and Ira
on our own. She went to the District Committee and they gave her more time to get
ready till tomorrow. Then we made arrangements about the naval school. Mother
went to the Regional Committee and then called at the naval school, and I went to
see Finkelshteyn. There was quite a scene at their school. The boys had been told
to cover the floor of the attic storey with lime. There wasnt enough lime, so they
decided to dilute it. But they added superphosphate instead of lime. This created a
chemical reaction, which produced chlorine gas. They were all walking about the
attic wearing gas masks. Varfolomeev came and shouted at them. (Obviously, it
was a waste of my time trying to teach you chemistry!)
Later Dodya went to give in his bicycle to the army (3 days ago there was a
summons ordering the mobilisation of his bicycle).
When I got home, Mother was already there. She told me that the naval school
might take me. But I doubt it very much. Then Mother went off again somewhere.
That was when the worst thing happened.
The alert sounded. I paid no attention. Then I heard a lot of noise coming from
outside and looked out. First I looked down. Then I looked up in the sky and I saw
12 Junkers1. Then there was a thundering noise of bombs. Deafening explosions
one after the other, but the window panes didnt shake. The bombs were clearly
dropping quite far away, but the force was incredible. Ira and I ran downstairs. The
explosions went on. I ran back up to our apartment. Zagoskins wife was standing
on the landing. She had also had a fright and run downstairs. We got talking. Then
Mother came running in from somewhere; she had managed to make her way along
the street. Soon they sounded the all-clear. The city was in an apalling state after
the Fascist raid. Half the sky was full of smoke. The harbour, the Kirov factory and
all that side of town had been bombed. Night fell, and we could see a sea of fire over
in the direction of the Kirov factory. Gradually the flames are dying down. There is
still smoke everywhere, though, and an acrid smell in the air. My throat is stinging
from it.
So that was it: the first proper bombardment of the city of Leningrad.
1
Probably the Junkers Ju-89, a four-engine bomber.
 30

Now its night: the night of the 8th to the 9th of September. What will this night
bring?
Still before midnight:
No sooner had Ira gone to bed than the alert sounded again. We pulled on our
clothes and went down to the ground floor. First, there was firing from anti-aircraft
guns, then howling and machine-gun fire from the planes. All the time, the searchlights
were sweeping the sky, but not a single plane was shot down. They were bombing
again somewhere. Everyone who lives on the two bottom floors of our building (not
counting the cellar) was in the corridor on the ground floor. The time dragged by,
slowly and agonisingly. Then somewhere, outside No. 36, someone began banging
out an alarm on the tram rails. That scared us. Maruska, Lidka and I put on our gas
masks and went out to find out what was going on. But the sentry in the yard said
there hadnt been any warning of a gas attack. About two hours passed. Eventually
we made up our minds to go back in to our apartments. The all-clear still hadnt
sounded. The blaze out to the east had died down, but now and again German planes
came storming over the city at high speed. They were coming under fire but they just
kept storming over the city. Now I dont know what to do. Mother and Ira have gone
to sleep in all their clothes. Maybe Ill do the same. Im not sure. The Fascists want to
make this a week the people of Leningrad will never forget. Clearly they had no luck
trying to take the city by land, so now they are trying to destroy it from the air.
9 September No change at the front. Our troops have taken back a town
called Yelno. Better than nothing, I suppose.
Now therell be no rest for Leningrad. Theyre going to bomb us every day.
They want us to take a new tenant in our apartment the family of the head of
an engineering trust1. The creeps! Mother wants to turn them down flat.
The siren goes off the alert lasts an hour, then the all-clear sounds. After ten
minutes, the alert goes off again. If this keeps up, people will be driven out of their
minds. We dont even have an air-raid shelter in our building.
I think Ill join the fire brigade at school. I probably wont get into the naval
school. Ill go to bed now, while its still quiet. Who knows whatll happen later?
15 September. I made up my mind this morning. Im not even going to go to the
naval school. I wont write down the reason here. I dont know what this decision
has cost me. I have tears in my eyes as I write this, but Ive had as much as I can
take. Its over now. Or perhaps not. It will be a real blow for Mother. But I know
its the right decision
16 September. Today I did something terrible. I lost thirty roubles!! Thirty
roubles!! Mother gave me a thirty-rouble note for sunflower oil, as she didnt have

1
The Soviet authorities were rehousing people whose houses had been destroyed by bombs or shells in other peoples
homes.
 31

anything smaller, and I lost it All day Ive been sick about it. We have next to
nothing as it is, and then I go and lose all that money at once
17 September. A big event this evening. The director of a building trust is going to
be housed in our apartment. A Mr Iv together with his wife, from the Moskovsky
District. Today, all his possessions were moved in. Tomorrow hell probably be
here himself. Theyve promised Mother that she can use the building trust canteen,
and their air-raid shelter.
18 September. I went to see Finkelshteyn. We arranged my hours of duty at
the school. Im on tomorrow from eight in the evening to eight in the morning. A
decree has been passed, ordering all men over sixteen to enrol for military training.
Still, the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds are going first. A new decree yesterday
announced that street battles were taking place across Leningrad, and ordered all
men over sixteen, and all women over eighteen to go out to man the barricades.
Incredible!
The Germans have been shelling the town again. Nevsky Prospekt was shelled,
together with the bridges and Frunzensky District. Barricades wont hold up against
that; theyre far too old-fashioned. Modern warfare needs air power, tanks, heavy
artillery. Forget barricades!
25 September. Today I decided, once and for all, what Im going to do. I wont
go to the naval school. Ill get my passport. Ill stay in the school fire brigade. Ill
ask Mother to be evacuated so Im able to study. In the meantime, Ill go and dig
trenches. In a year theyll take me for the army. Ill either be killed, or not. After the
war Ill go to study at a ship-building institute or at the history faculty. Meanwhile
Ill earn as much as I can doing manual work. Down with the politics of indecision!
Today Ill go to school for eight oclock. If Mother comes home before then, Ill tell
her what Ive decided. Ive thought through all the possible alternatives and nothing
else will do.
I have also decided that from tomorrow onwards, I will spend no more than one
and a half or two roubles on food for myself (per day).
This decision is a blow for me, but it will save me from a worse blow in the
future. If it means that Ill be killed or crippled, that doesnt matter, although,
knowing my luck, that is just what will happen. If Im crippled, then Ill kill myself.
As for death, well, you only die once. Its a very good thing that Mother has Ira as
well as me.
So, in order not to lay my honour on the line, Ive decided to lay my life on the
line. A fancy-sounding statement, but its true
1 and 2 October Im sixteen, but I have the health of a sixty-year-old. I
hope my death comes soon. I hope that my ill health will not become too much of
a burden for my mother.
 32

The craziest thoughts keep coming into my head. Some day, I, or somebody
else, might read these lines with a contemptuous smile (at the very least). But I
dont care right now.
I have had one dream ever since I can remember: to be a sailor. Now this dream
has gone up in smoke. So what has been the point of my life? If I dont go to the
specialist naval school Ill join up as a partisan, or something, just as long as I dont
die in vain. If I die, I want to die fighting for my country
13 October. The day passed peacefully. But the night was a different story. This
evening Mother told me something interesting. She ran into , who is working at
the military hospital at the moment. She suggested I go to work at the same hospital.
I would have to take patients from hospital to hospital. I would be completely
responsible for getting them to the right place: if anybody got lost, I would face a
tribunal. Id do the rounds at night, mainly in a truck or some other vehicle. I would
get 20 roubles pay per month and I would get a workers card. And maybe dinner.
One day on, one day off. Im happy to do it. I dont suppose I have a choice
David, Boris and I plus two women were at Stations One and Two tonight.
David and I were on the steps. I think Ill never forget these endless, anxious nights.
You sit there, in the half-light, with a paraffin lamp (a Bat1) in a bucket at your
feet, the staircase in front, a window to one side. The anti-aircraft guns boom all
around you sit there, straining to catch every sound. Your heart starts to race
at the whistle of a falling bomb, you prick up your ears at the sound of a German
plane. The window keeps lighting up from explosions. Sometimes the staircase and
the entire building shudder and quake from a high-explosive bomb falling nearby.
Its the same every night. You wish you could sleep, eat, forget it all, but then there
it is again, that whistling close by instinctively, you huddle against the wall with
your head in your shoulders The whistling stops. Then theres the flash of the
explosion in the window, the staircase shudders, and only then you hear the faint
boom in the distance.
Last night was fairly quiet, so I went up on the roof with David. We were just
having a look around when we saw searchlights and then, out of nowhere, a terrific
hissing noise from a bomb, getting louder and louder. A moment later, David and
I were in the attic, unhurt by the fall. We decided it wasnt safe to stay there, and
went down onto the stairs, but at that moment there was a short whistle and a few
explosions right above our heads. It got bright as daylight. David realised before
I did what was going on, grabbed a shovel and ran to put out the bomb. I did the
same. Then there was a furious battle. There was thick, acrid smoke all around us
that stung our throats and went right down into our lungs. The sweat was running
down our faces, but we kept working away, trying to put out the bombs. I ran to
1
A type of windproof paraffin lantern.
 33

Station One. There was a woman standing there shouting, terrified, Its a bomb!
Put it out! She was taking handfuls of sand and throwing it at the burning pieces
of thermite. I took a shovel and in less than a minute I had covered the flames
with sand. The bright light went out, and suddenly it was pitch black. Somehow or
other I managed to get out of the attic, grabbing the woman by the hand, and ran
to Station Two. There they had already put out all the bombs. I looked out on the
roof there were about ten people running about up there. I wanted to breathe
some fresh air, to calm down, to come back to my senses. Soon the air raid was
over. After that, nothing else happened. There was another alert, but we didnt get
hit. After that, Finkelshteyn and I turned in and slept till morning. We were woken
by the radio announcing some very bad news: Vyazma has fallen. The Germans are
still advancing.
Later I found out that twenty-three bombs fell on our school. I put out two and
helped to put out a third.
14 October. Today there was a nasty scene at home. Ira had a tantrum about me
eating at the building trust canteen, saying that she hadnt even had a bowl of soup
at her canteen. Mother told her to calm down. She told me that Ira had been given
borshch at the canteen, and beans with salt pork, but that she had refused to eat them,
saying they made her feel sick. All she had to eat was a left-over half-bar of chocolate,
and that was all. So Iras turning down food, and yet shes getting mad at me! She tells
me shes going about hungry, but theres nothing to stop her having dinner. Mother
has started saying to me that we need to get used to the idea that one bowl of soup a
day per person is enough. But what if I cant get used to that idea? Im not eating half,
or even a quarter the amount I need to eat to satisfy my hunger. Oh, this terrible war!
Now its dull and overcast. Its freezing, and a light snow is falling
17 October Leningrad is completely cut off from the USSR, the Leningrad
front looks all right for the moment: they are still holding out. Food supplies in
Leningrad are running out. It looks as if people will start to die of hunger soon,
therell be epidemics, etc. I keep thinking longingly of how I could have been
evacuated. Now, Im afraid to look into the future. You just have to live each day
as it comes.
Tomorrow Im going to tell them I cant do the night shift at school, because I
dont have any warm boots. Now would be a bad time to catch cold.
There is a gnawing feeling in my stomach all the time, and my mouth keeps
watering. And today I even had dinner at the trust canteen. Its the lack of bread
you notice most of all. Today Mother bought some spiced biscuits made from oats
and a little sugar. Even they were better than nothing. Id be prepared to live on this
amount of food for a while perhaps even for about three years, as long as I knew
it would stay the same. But I know it wont. It will keep getting smaller
 34

20 October. This morning I was bored. I went out in search of kvass1, got cold
and came home. It was freezing at home. I didnt take my coat off. I had dinner
at the trust canteen. Cabbage soup and beetroot. I ate, sat there for a while and
then went to see Mother. While I was there, I took out a couple of books from the
Library Fund: Voltaire, and Dumas. La Dame de Monsoreau and The Forty Five
Guardsmen the concluding part. I ate at the canteen there. I had oatmeal. Then
I set off home. I came back, and the alert sounded. I read a bit of Voltaire. I forgot,
before that, Igor came in to my room. He said hed bring me a ration card in the
evening but I dont believe it any more. The shops still arent giving out food for the
third ten-day period in the month. There was quite a scene at home this evening. As
I already said, I took a book by Dumas out of the library. I took it out to read myself,
as I have nothing to read. This evening, in came Anfisa Nikolaevna, looking as if she
owned the place, and said to Mother, Nina Mikhaylovna, heres the Zola book I
borrowed from you. (I lent her the book, actually, not Mother, but thats nothing
to what happened next.) Then she walked over to the table, took the Dumas book
and said Nina Mikhaylovna, Im borrowing your Dumas, I have nothing to read.
And Mother started telling her how wonderful the book was, and telling her Oh
yes, do take it. It made me so mad. I started to protest, smiling all the time (thats
how low I had to stoop), saying that I wanted to read the book myself. Then Mother
started shouting at me that I could read the Voltaire, etc. There was nothing I could
do. Anfisa Nikolaevna took the book, and went off with it. I am beginning to get
some idea of the way Anfisa Nikolaevna operates. She is absolutely transparent. In
the first place, she wants us to be accommodating (to put it mildly) and is trying to
train us up. In the second place, she doesnt want to give away anything for free,
even though she can see we dont have enough bread or sugar, etc. and even though
she has plenty to eat. I suppose she is just very selfish. But maybe shes right to do
as she does. Mother borrowed a glassful of sugar-coated sweets and promised to pay
her back and didnt. Ever since, Anfisa Nikolaevna seems to have made up her mind
not to give us a scrap of food. Now I feel ashamed when I see Mother drinking water
and Anfisa Nikolaevna, standing next to her talking about the theatre, while Mother
complains to her that things could hardly get any worse.
It may be pride on my part, but I cant just stand by and watch without
getting angry. What is even worse is that I act just like Mother sometimes. Anfisa
Nikolaevna is like some fat, well-fed pussycat lying sprawled on the sofa, waiting
for you to tickle it under the chin. She tells her husband absolutely everything
(except anything to do with herself, of course) and he does whatever she wants,
without even realising it thanks to the power of the pillow. Another thing that
happened was that Igor promised to bring us a ration card tonight, and Anfisa
1
A drink made of lightly fermented bread, with a very low alcohol content.
 35

Nikolaevna went to Mother and said to her face, Igor cant give you a ration card.
Its been taken away. She does whatever she can to help herself. She isnt used
to repaying one good turn with another, so she lets you do things for her and gives
you nothing but flattering words in return. I couldnt believe it when Mother gave
Anfisa Nikolaevna a big cabbage, while she gave who is a good friend to us, a
smaller one.
22 October. All morning I stood around in the beer queues. I only just managed
to get two bottles. Got frostbite in my feet. Then I spent three coupons on cereal. In
the evening I was on duty at the school. There were no air raids. The Germans have
taken Taganrog. They are still advancing.
I have been reading La Dame de Monsoreau by Dumas, and cant put it down.
Its an exciting read.
Mother swapped the two bottles of beer for 400 g of bread. Im being sent off
again to queue for beer.
23 October. Got two more bottles of beer. Went to the cinema to see St Jorgens
Day. Read La Dame de Monsoreau.
At home its cold and theres nothing to eat. Both at once.
24 October. I spent all day from ten in the morning to six in the evening
queuing for beer instead of being on duty at the school. I didnt even have time to
queue at the militia office for my passport. And I didnt even manage to get any beer
in the end. Mother came home in the evening and cooked up a whole cabbage. We
managed to put something in our bellies at any rate. Theres nothing in particular in
the news reports. Mother told me that the Central Committee has been evacuated
to Kuybyshev. I can imagine the situation in Moscow.
Theyre allowing 12.5 g of tea per person per month. No eggs. No fish either.
Today Anfisa Nikolavena did something unusual for her. She gave us three mashed
carrot fritters from the trust canteen, and ten sugar-coated sweets. So we had
something to eat with our half-mug of tea. I wrote a letter to Tina, asking her to
send a food parcel, with rusks or potato cakes. I need to think about finding work.
Ill have to forget about school for the time being.
Theres something the matter with Ira. She has blue shadows under her eyes,
and a sharp pain in her side that comes on if she walks fast. She cant eat anything
liquid (soup). Mother wants to take her to the doctor.
What surprises do the Germans have in store for us? Theyre threatening, at all
events, to raze Leningrad to the ground in three days of constant raids (or so say
the Chistovs; they work in the suburbs and, like it or not, get the chance to read the
leaflets that the Germans have been dropping there).
There are queues everywhere: for beer, for kvass, for carbonated water, for
pepper, salt (especially salt!) and mustard
 36

25 October. Today I only managed to get frostbite in my feet in the queues. I

didnt manage to achieve anything else. I wonder if the lemonade you get in beer
cellars is made with saccharine or with real fruit juice?
I want so badly to sleep and sleep, eat and eat sleep and eat, sleep and eat.
What else does anyone need? But as soon as people are healthy and have enough to
eat, they start wanting more. And so on and so on. A month ago, I probably dreamt
of bread with butter and salami. Now all I dream about is bread
Mother tells me now isnt the time to write a diary. Im going to write it, all the
same. Even if I dont ever get to read it again, somebody else will read it, and find
out that once upon on a time there was a boy named Yura Ryabinkin, and maybe
have a bit of a laugh at my expense
29 October. Im so weak now that I can barely put one foot in front of the other.
Even going upstairs is an enormous task. Mother says my face has begun to swell
up. It all comes of not having enough to eat. Anfisa Nikolaevna made an interesting
comment today: Everybodys selfish these days, nobodys thinking of the future,
thats why everybody is eating as much as they can today. She has a point, that old
pussycat.
I wrote another letter to Tina today. I asked her to send a food parcel with
potato pancakes, oilcake1, etc. Is it really so hard to send us a parcel? I need to train
myself to go without food, but I cant. What am I supposed to do?
I dont know how Ill be able to study. The other day I tried doing algebra, and I
couldnt think of the formulas, the only things that came into my head were loaves
of bread. I should have read Love of Life by Jack London instead. Its a brilliant
story, the perfect thing to read, given the mood Im in right now. Apparently the
ration cards for November are for exactly the same amount as before. They havent
even increased the amount of bread. Mother says that even if we beat back the
Germans, the rations will stay the same
And it looks as if the Germans will declare a continuous onslaught of bombing on
the 7th and 8th of November. But first, theyre going to make us suffer with artillery
shelling and bombing. They want to give us a surprise on the day of the celebrations2.
Im not taking very good care of myself at the moment. I sleep in all my clothes,
and just give my face a quick rinse in the morning, and I dont wash my hands with
soap, or change my clothes. Its cold and dark in our apartment. In the evenings we
sit by candlelight.
But the worst thing of all, the thing I really cant bear, is this: here I am, living
with hunger and cold, surrounded by fleas, and meanwhile, in the room next door,

1
Block made from the residue of seeds which have been pressed to extract oil.
2
The anniversary of the October Revolution (25 October) was celebrated in the Soviet Union on 7 November, owing to
the changes made to the calendar.
 37

things are completely different; in that room, there is always bread, porridge and
sweets, warmth, the bright glow of an Estonian paraffin lamp, comfort Its envy,
this feeling I have towards Anfisa Nikolaevna. But I cant fight it.
I cant go to see anybody. Should I go and visit friends? I dont have any. Vovka
is in Kazan and Mishka is at work. And those are selfish through and through, so
why should I go and see them? Once again, Im starting to feel envy, even ill will,
and a sense of horrible, bitter resentment.
1 November. Today, on the 1st, there was an unpleasant mix-up, and they didnt
let me into the trust canteen till after two. By two oclock, there was no mashed
potato left, so I had to make do with two bowls of lentil soup. I got hold of 3 vials
of pertussin a mixture of rum with valerian and cough drops. Its amazingly sweet
and filling. Ive already drunk 2 vials. Theres only one left.
5 November. I was meant to have read Gogols Dead Souls by today, but I cant
read by candlelight. Im writing in a daze. Im behind with the news. People are
saying, The 24th anniversary will decide everything1.
What is a man, a human life? What is it, in the end? According to an old saying,
Life isnt worth a kopeck. How many people have lived before us and how many
have had to die? But its all right to die, knowing and feeling that youve achieved what
you set out to do in your youth, or in your childhood. Its all right to die, and know
that there are people to carry on your work in scholarship, or science or literature.
But how difficult it is What does Hitler want? Does he want to create his own
empire, when future generations will curse the very idea? And thanks to a handful of
adventurers, millions and millions of people are dying! People!!! Real people!!!
Its already late. The artillery fire has stopped for now. Hunger, cold, darkness,
dirt and lice. And from here, the future is like some lurid glow, shrouded in darkness.
6 and 7 November. Classes are still going on, but for some reason Im not
enjoying them. We sit at our desks in fur coats, and lots of the boys dont prepare for
the lessons at all. Ive noticed that in literature classes, the boys just repeat whatever
the textbook says about the characters in Dead Souls, if they can. A few have never
even read Dead Souls
Weve run out of rice porridge. So for 3 days Im going to go completely hungry.
Ill hardly be able to move that is, if Im still all right. I have taken to drinking lots
of water again. It will make me swell up, but I dont care. Mother is sick. She must
be very sick if she actually admits it. She has a cough and a runny nose, wheezing,
sickness, a fever and a headache.
I am sick too, I think. I also have a fever, a headache and a runny nose. Its
because when I was on duty at the school I had to cross three courtyards without a
coat or hat in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold

1
The 24th anniversary of the Revolution, 7 November 1941.
 38

I cant seem to concentrate on my studies. I dont feel like studying at all. Theres
nothing in my head but thoughts of food, shelling and bombardment. Yesterday I
took the bin out to the yard and then barely managed to drag myself back up to
the first floor. I felt as if Id been dragging a 30 kg sack along for half an hour. I sat
down, and barely managed to get my breath back. Now the alert has sounded, and
the anti-aircraft guns are firing on all sides. There have been some bombs too. The
clock says five to five. Mother gets in after six.
9 and 10 November. As Im falling asleep every night, I dream of bread, butter,
pies, and potatoes. Also, just before I fall asleep, I think of how, in twelve hours
time, the night will be over and Ill be able to eat some bread. Mother is always
telling me that she and Ira are only having two glasses of hot tea with sugar and half
a bowl of soup a day. No more. And sometimes another bowl of soup in the evening.
Im getting all the food. Ira for instance, even refuses second helpings of soup in the
evening. And they both keep saying that I eat as much as a working man, because
I eat two bowls of soup at the canteens and more bread than them. My character
seems to have changed completely, for some reason. Ive become floppy and weak.
When I write, my hand starts to shake. When I walk, my knees are so weak, I feel as
if Im about to fall over.
9 and 10 November (continued). All the same, I can safely say that I could get
used to anything, as long as I didnt have to live side by side with people who have
plenty to eat. They always sound so happy and complacent, and every noise gets to
me. When Im in the kitchen, I see the saucepan standing there, with food left over
from some meal Anfisa Nikolavena hasnt finished, and I cant stand it any more.
I just explode (not literally, of course, but I feel as if I am). And the smell of bread,
pancakes, and porridge keeps tickling at my nostrils, calling out Look! Look! But
you have to go hungry. You cant eat any of this! Ive got used to the shelling and
the bombs, but this is something I cant get used to I really cant!
Now I can hear the sound of Anfisa Nikolaevnas cheerful laughter yet again.
Yesterday, Mother borrowed a piece of sugar from Anfisa Nikolaevna, now she
wants to borrow some from the Kozhinskys. But today is the last day of this ten-day
period. Tomorrow well have our own sugar, and bread bread! Just one night to go.
We havent had all our rations for this ten-day period; were short on 400 g
wheat, 615 g butter and 100 g flour. But these things arent to be found anywhere.
Huge queues form wherever they are being given out; hundreds and hundreds of
people stand in the street, in the cold, and meanwhile theres only enough for 80
100 people. So people stand and freeze and leave empty-handed. People get up
at four in the morning, spend till nine in the evening queuing in different shops,
and leave with nothing to show for it. Its terrible, but theres nothing you can
do. The alert sounded two hours ago. Hunger and necessity force you out into the
 39

shops, out into the freezing cold, into the long queues and the crush of people. After
weeks spent like this, you have no desire for anything any more, you just feel a dull,
cold apathy towards everything. Theres never enough to eat, you never get enough
sleep, youre constantly cold. And on top of all this, youre supposed to study. What
can we do? I hope Mother will be able to work out the answer to that question. And
if she cant, Ill try to work it out for her. What can I look forward to this evening?
Mother and Ira will come home, cold and so tired they can barely walk, to find
no food in the house, and no firewood for the stove. And then Ill get a telling
off, because someone in the apartment below us has managed to get hold of some
cereal and some meat, but I havent. Theres been meat in the shops, but I havent
managed to get any. Mother will shrug and look blameless, and tell me Im busy,
too. Im at work, I cant get it! So then Ill go off to queue, to no avail. I know that
Im the only one who can get the food we need to bring us all back to life, to save us
But I dont have the strength or the energy. If only I had felt boots! But I dont,
and every time I stand in a queue, Im one step closer to pleurisy, to sickness Ive
decided its better to drink water, to risk getting sick with dropsy. Im drinking as
much as I can. My cheeks are swollen now. Another week, ten days, or a month,
and if I dont die in a German bombardment, Ill be completely swollen up.
Im sitting here, crying as I write this. Im only sixteen, after all. The people
responsible for this war are just scum
Farewell, dreams of my childhood! Im leaving you behind for ever. In future,
Ill stay away from you; Ill avoid you like the plague. Id happily throw away my
whole past life in return for not knowing the true value of bread and salami, and not
being tormented by thoughts of how I used to be happy! Happy theres no other
word for it, for the life I once had. I used to feel sure of the future! What a feeling!
And Ill never have it again
What I wish is that Tina would read this diary, sitting with a cup of tea and a
sandwich in her room in Schlisselberg. She has never in her life had to go through
what we are going through here in Leningrad.
This evening, after the air raid, I went to the shop on Sennaya Square. With
enormous effort, I managed to push my way through an unbelievable crush of
people such a crush that adults were screaming, groaning and sobbing and using
their fists into the shop and to the front of the queue, to get 190 g of butter and
500 g of salami made of horsemeat and soya. When I got home, I had a bad pain
in my chest, just like I had two years ago. I definitely have dry pleurisy. Its a very
bad pain, just the same as before. Its agony. Tomorrow I must go to the TB clinic.
I really dont want to die of pleurisy right now. But what can I do? Im helpless.
There are only two effective remedies for pleurisy: (1) a really good diet with plenty
of fruit and (2) dry, clean, warm air. I have neither.
 40

Mother and Ira have had breakfast and gone off to Mothers work. I am going
to go to the TB clinic. But before that Ill have some breakfast in comfort Ill
read a bit.
Today I managed to get four litres of beer using my ration card. I gave them to
Anfisa Nikolaevna. She let me drink half a litre. It was nice. I swear, in the old days,
I would have become a regular alcoholic.
I forgot to say the most important thing Mothers legs have swollen up and
become rock hard. If its not one thing, its another
By five, I have to go out to queue without fail. We are all on edge. I havent
heard Mother speak calmly for some time. Whenever she talks, she either scolds,
shouts, or has hysterics (or something else of that sort). Its all because well, there
are lots of reasons: hunger, constant fear of shelling and bombing. Our family of
three are always at odds, always fighting. If Mother is sharing anything out, Ira and
I will watch her intently to see that she divides it equally. Even writing this makes
me feel bad
26 November. Today Shtakelbergs mother told me I was a complete fool not to
steal food from the Ivs. She told me she wouldnt think twice.
Theyre giving out jam instead of vegetable oil. More queues. If only I could get
hold of coconut oil somewhere!
Mother has applied to get us places on a flight out of Leningrad. I have a feeling
it wont come to anything. All the same, I still cling to some secret hope of getting
out. But meanwhile, Im weighed down by all sorts of dreadful thoughts.
Mother asked me for Iras bread ration book. They want to take my biscuits
away from me. Oh well. If Ira gets her hands on the biscuits, I wont even get a sniff
of them Therell be more ugly scenes around sharing out food more for her,
less for her Perhaps Ill still get biscuits tomorrow, but after that, itll be the end
of life as I know it (and things are bad enough anyway). What sort of a life will it
be without my biscuits? Ill have to go off to the shop every day to get potato flour,
coconut oil or jam, and listening to them complaining every day that they are tired
etc. And Ira wont let go of those biscuits.
28 November. I went to the TB clinic. They sent me for an X-ray and some tests.
I dont know what will happen now.
Today Ill beg Mother to let me have Iras bread ration card. Ill grovel at her
feet. If she says no, I wont have anything to give me the strength to move. Today
the alert has been going on for about three hours again. All the shops are shut.
Where can I get potato flour or jam? Once the air raid is over, Ill go out hunting
for something. Ive lost hope of being evacuated. Its nothing but talk. Ill give up
going to school. I cant keep anything inside my head. How on earth am I supposed
to? At home the three of us are hungry, shouting at one another and crying, and
 41

the Ivs, who have everything they need, are living right next to us, in the same
apartment. Every day is as monotonous as the one before: anti-aircraft guns, the
same old thoughts, the hunger, bombing and shelling. The electricity has just gone
off, I can hear the drone of a plane, then anti-aircraft fire, and then the house
shakes from the blast of a bomb exploding nearby. Dull, grey weather, low, dirty-
white clouds, snow outside, and grey, ugly thoughts in my head, too. Thoughts of
food, warmth and comfort. Not only is there no bread at home (now theyre giving
out 125 g of bread per person per day). Theres not a crumb, not a thing to eat. And
its so cold that my hands and feet are freezing
Today, Mother will come and take Iras bread ration card away from me. All
right. Ill give it up for Iras sake; then at least she may be able to get out of this
living hell alive. If only I could get out of here, if only I could get out Im so
selfish. Ive become hard-hearted What sort of person have I become? Im not
the same person I was three months ago. The day before yesterday I took a spoonful
of food from Anfisa Nikolaevnas saucepan. Ive stolen butter and cabbage from
stores of food put by for the next ten days. I look on greedily if Mother is dividing
a sweet between Ira and me, I start shouting and arguing over every scrap, every
crumb of food. Who am I? If Im to have any hope of becoming the person I used
to be, I need to have hope, to be sure that Ill be evacuated with my family today or
tomorrow, that would be enough for me. But it isnt going to happen. We wont be
evacuated. And yet, I continue to hope, secretly in my heart of hearts. If I didnt
hope, I dont know what I would do; perhaps Id start stealing or robbing. Theres
only one thing I would never do Id never turn traitor. I know that. But when it
comes to everything else I have to stop writing, my hands are frozen.
29 November. Im struck by how differently Anfisa Nikolaevna is behaving. For
instance, yesterday she gave us a plate of wheat porridge and a plateful of rusks, and
took nothing from us in return. She often used to bring cocoa back from the trust
canteen. Now theres no cocoa to be had any more. But today, I got some jam for
her, and she gave me 50 g of cocoa for it. I feel that she really is being a help to us.
Perhaps if things go on like this for another six months, we might actually become
friends. Still, who knows? The fact is, she wont be here in a few days time. Its late
now. Evening. We had kissel made with the potato flour and jam I got today and the
rusks Anfisa Nikolaevna gave us, with more jam.
Tomorrow Ira will get 250 g of biscuits from her ration card. So many biscuits.
Oh well, let her eat them
Today Mother said that she had applied for permission to fly out of the city. I
dont know what will come of it. Im hoping for the best
30 November. Evacuation is in the air, as far as Mother is concerned. Yesterday
she and Anfisa Nikolaevna talked for a long time about it. Anfisa Nikolaevna gave,
 42

or rather, promised to give Mother her parents address in Zlatoust. It isnt a grain-
producing area but they dont have the same food shortages there as we do here. But
it all depends on the result of Mothers application. Thats clear. We should find out
in the next week.
Anfisa Nikolaevna is giving us eight rusks every day. Today she gave us a piece
of horse meat and a bottle of vegetable oil. Good of her to give us all that food
So, were beginning a final push against Germany. Outside Moscow, Rostov
and Leningrad. To hell with the Fascist swine, let it die on its feet. Mind, you, in
all the smoke and the stink itll give off when it dies, well be lucky if anyone is left
alive.
Tomorrow I need to go to school. Definitely. If evacuation is a possibility, Ill
only be allowed to leave the city if Im still at school. So I must go to school.
I want so badly to eat some bread. Bread bread bread.
1 December. The start of a new month. The start of a new ten-day period. I am
writing this in the morning. I got to school by eight oclock this morning, but they
said there were no classes until ten oclock, and that we wouldnt be allowed into
school until twenty to ten, so I went home. I called in at the trust canteen and had a
cup of hot tea and a chocolate. The chocolate means 10 g comes off my sweet ration.
I went home. At half past nine, I wanted to go to school, but the alert went off. Now,
as I write this, the all-clear still hasnt sounded. Its already past ten, I think.
Its so important for me now to preserve energy that its a big decision to go
along the corridor to the dining room. I feel weak all over. My legs feel heavy, my
knees weak. Its hard to get up off my chair. My whole body is weak. And I probably
wont have anything to eat until about six or seven this evening. Mother has hidden
the oil. Ive looked for it and cant find it. I cant eat raw horse meat. If the all-clear
doesnt go in the next two hours, I wont go to school. Whats the point? Mind you,
I probably should. I could just take a few of the text books with me.
So now it looks as if the Germans are beginning raids at ten in the morning, or
rather, at nine thirty, now. Thats exactly when I have to go to school. What am I
supposed to do?
Im going to try to sum up what Ive learnt this month, and what has changed
between 30 October and 30 November. On 30 October, evacuation seemed like
something unreal and far away, but now, its a matter of days. I feel that this month
a month of suffering, tears, family rows and hunger has sapped half the strength
I once had. All month, I have never once eaten my fill. Not a single day has passed
without bombing and shelling, not a single day without the shadow of hunger,
without fear for our lives: my own, Mothers and Iras
2 December. Its torture being around Mother and Ira in the evening at the
moment. Ira sits at table eating deliberately slowly; not only in order to relish her
 43

food, but to enjoy the fact that the rest of us, who have eaten our share, are staring at
her hungrily. Mother always finishes first, and then takes a bit of food from each of
us. When the bread is shared out, Ira starts wailing if my share is bigger than hers by
even half a gram. Ira is always with Mother, but I only see Mother in the morning
and spend time with her in the evening. Maybe that is why Ira is always in the
right. I suppose Im selfish, as Mother has told me several times. But I remember
how, back when I was friends with Vovka Shmaylov, I had no idea of what was his
and what was mine. Back then, it was Mother herself who was selfish. She wouldnt
give Vovka books that belonged to me, even if I had two copies, etc. etc. Why did
she decide to encourage that sort of behaviour in me? Anyway, its still not too late
to change.
Before, I used to need two canteen dinners and a big supper and breakfast, as
well as snacks in between, in order to feel full for a day. Now I have to make do with
100 g of biscuits in the morning, nothing in the afternoon, and a bowl of soup or
broth in the evening. Apart from that, theres just water: water in the form of tea,
coffee, soup, or just plain water. Thats what Im living on.
No news about our evacuation. Or next to no news. Mother is starting to worry
now about leaving. She keeps saying, Imagine, arriving in some place you dont
know etc. etc.
3 December. Mother is sick. Today she didnt go out to work. She has a fever,
shes aching all over, her legs feel heavy. Perhaps its dropsy. It was bad enough
before but I cant write any more. I feel so miserable. Im sitting in the kitchen,
logs are crackling in the stove and my sick mother is lying on the trunk beside me.
Oh God!
According to the news reports, Tikhvin has been taken by the Germans.
Sebastopol is still holding out.
Mother is sick, Ira is a child, Tina has sent nothing, I dont even know her
address, Im exhausted, I can barely stand. Can we hope for anything?
4 December. Worked hard all day. Got up early and ran round all the bakers
shops. Got some sweet biscuits, then went to Pravda Street to the clinic, to get
a doctor for Mother, but it wasnt the right clinic for our district. I had to go to
Matyanin Lane to another clinic. Then more queuing, and chopping firewood.
More misery.
Mother has been dismissed from the District Committee in connection with
her expected evacuation. Because shes being evacuated and needs warm clothes
Shes too sick to get up. The doctor who came found that she had flu, and her heart
is working badly, which is the reason for her swollen legs, the pain in her side etc.
What she needs to get better is food, which we dont have. So now Mother cant get
up, she has a serious illness and she has lost her job. Its possible that the evacuation
 44

will be on foot. How will Mother, with her swollen legs and her illness, Ira, who has
hardly any strength and I, with all my other worries about myself and about them;
how will we be able to walk the long, 300 km route over the snow, together with 60
kg or more of luggage? We cant spend a month on the road. So this is where
we finish up starving to death on the road, lying sick in some remote hospital, or
wasting away from constant hunger, our bodies swollen, barely able to drag out the
pitiful existence that our lives have become
5 December. Mother is right, its vital to keep believing things will get better.
Right now, we have to believe that were going to be evacuated. It has to happen, and
it will. Though Mother can hardly walk, shell get better. Though Ira is complaining
of a pain in her right side, it will pass. Though Mother and I have no good shoes we
dont have felt boots or warm things, well find some way out of Leningrad, out of
this hungry prison of a city. Now, its evening, the alert has sounded, the anti-aircraft
guns are firing, and bombs are exploding. Its like a terrible lottery: the winners live,
and the losers die. Thats what our lives are like. The Ivs arent leaving tomorrow
after all. They are going in a few days time, though. Lucky for them.
Hunger. Cruel hunger!
Gradually, bit by bit, I am starting to build up a picture of Anfisa Nikolaevna. A
sort of portrait of her is emerging from the quarrels with her husband, during which
both of them reveal certain things about their lives, from conversations with them,
and especially now that Mr Iv has opened his heart and told me the whole sad
story:
Anfisa Nikolaevna is twenty-seven years old. When she was fourteen, she was
already in love with a coarse man (or rather, she was his lover). This man drove her
to drink with his violence and brutality. From that time on she became addicted
to wine, vodka, etc. She would get delirious, and end up lying drunk in the street.
When she was sober, though, she could be fiendishly beautiful and seductive. This
was what she was like when Iv met her. Feeling the possibility of a fresh start, she
wrote him a letter begging him to take her away from all this filth, and he left his
wife and daughter for her. So a new life began for her. Her husband earned 2,000
roubles a month, and she would spend forty roubles a day. He started taking her
round sanatoriums, he did what he could to help her stop drinking. They quarrelled
over money. Mr Iv himself isnt too mentally stable either he has even spent
some time in a psychiatric hospital. And Anfisa Nikolaevna often spent his entire
salary on drink and left him with nothing. At the same time, she is quite a wonderful
person when she is sober. Perhaps its all an act, but anyway, all I can say is, its not
easy to get to the bottom of her character.
6 December. Eleven oclock in the morning. The Ivs still havent left. Their
departure has been put off for a couple of days. Mother and Ira have gone out
 45

to the offices of the Regional Party Committee. Mother has all sorts of things to
organise. She needs permission to leave the city, a place on a flight out, or else to
be added to Ivs party; she needs warm clothes for herself and felt boots, with
leather soles, for me; she needs to put a lock on the door. But Mother has almost
no energy left. To have energy, you need food. Its the most important of all, the
only thing your body can get energy from.
Mother has found out where shell be going to Barnaul, the outlying areas.
Everything now depends on just two things: how will we get there, and what will
we wear? Turanosova was meant to leave this morning. Probably there has been no
answer from the Smolny1 yet. That isnt good. It would be good if they added our
names to Ivs party.
Mother still has two problems to deal with. The first is to make sure we have
some money, by getting some from the Regional Party Committee, and by selling
some of our things. The second (which is much easier) is to arrange to be discharged
from work.
For the time being we are stuck because, first of all, we need warm clothes and
secondly, we need to sort out transport. But the most important thing of all is food.
We wont be able to keep moving without food. Well only be able to hold out until
the 13th or 14th of December, or maybe even the 9th or 10th.
Anfisa Nikolaevna gave us 300 g of dried peas yesterday, thinking she was
leaving today. If only shed given us 800 or 900 g!
I have a lot of difficult tasks facing me now: I need to treat myself for lice,
I need to go to the bathhouse, I need to get a haircut, pack away my books, get
firewood, buy food, and sort things out with the school. I feel as if any minute Ill
collapse from the strain of it all and take to my bed. And if I take to my bed that
will be it
7 December The next ten days will decide our fate. The most important
question now is how we are going to get out of the city and with whom. Oh, if
only I could have a couple of good meals in a row! How else am I going to get the
energy I need to face all the problems ahead? Mother is ill again. Today she had
only three hours sleep, from three to six in the morning. I really ought to go to see
Turanosova, to get the warm clothes she promised us. But its so cold outside and
Im so tired that Im afraid to even leave the house.
I began this diary in the summer and now its winter. I could never have imagined
back then what sort of diary it would turn out to be.
I am beginning to put money aside. I already have 56 roubles. Im the only
person who knows this money is in my possession. The stove has gone out and the
1
The Smolny Institute, founded as an elite educational establishment for girls in St Petersburg before the Revolution,
became the headquarters of the Bolshevik government after the Revolution before the HQ transferred to Moscow during
the Civil War. Thereafter, it was the seat of the local administration.
 46

kitchen is gradually growing colder and colder. I need to put on my coat, so as not
to freeze. To think, I want to go to Siberia!1 But I think that if I had something
to eat, I would stop feeling miserable and downcast, my tiredness would vanish, I
would find my tongue, and begin to feel like a human again, rather than some sad
imitation of a human being.
I have lost about 1015 kg in weight, not more. Perhaps even less, but if so, its
from drinking far too much water. I used to have only one and a half glasses of tea
for breakfast, but now even six isnt enough.
8 December. Today I lost the butter ration card for the first ten-day period
belonging to Sukharev the one that Mother took illegally for herself. What do I
do now? Now Im terrified that the whole story of Mother taking Sukharevs ration
card will come to light, and then it will be the end of me, as well as of Mother
and Ira. Im absolutely sure I lost the ration card in the trust canteen. Maybe I
didnt take it back from the woman behind the counter. Please let this be the end
of it. Please I dont know whether to tell Mother. If Mother is in a good mood,
which there isnt much sign of, Ill tell her. If not, Ill keep quiet about it.
Its torture to think Ive lost the ration card. I cant think of anything else.
One more (possible) scenario: supposing I lost the ration card at home; what
if Anfisa Nikolaevna finds it? Obviously, shell ask herself how we (and only we)
came by this ration card. Then shell look, and see the stamp from the Regional
Party Committee. Mother still had the committee stamp until only a few days ago.
Shell report it to Nikolay Matveevich and hell find out who Sukharev was and
Mother will face a tribunal and then she could get thrown out of the party, shot,
etc2.
Its three oclock in the afternoon now and Mother went out to work at nine.
What is she doing? Could it be possible that we wont be any closer to evacuation
by the end of the day? We need to go, now! But theres one urgent problem. We
need warm clothes. We wont be able to get anywhere without warm clothes.
9 December. The ration card has turned up Mother had it. Yesterday I bought
200 g of soured cream with it, and we ate the whole lot yesterday. And today we ate
up yesterdays fat ration of 100 g. I hope to God there is still 15 g left.
Yesterday Mother brought back two padded jackets and some warm trousers
she had got hold of. There is a queue for felt boots
The Regional Party Committee gave Mother money for evacuation. Yesterday
we counted our money we had just over 1,300 roubles. Mother will be without
work from the 10th of December. I will be so happy if we get permission for

1
i.e., Barnaul, where Yuras family are hoping to go once they have got out of the city.
2
During the Siege of Leningrad, citizens found guilty of food theft, ration card theft or fraud, stealing state property,
cowardice, desertion, and a number of other offences all faced the death penalty.
 47

evacuation from the Smolny. They must say yes, they have to, because how could it
be otherwise? He who wants shall get, and he who seeks shall always find!1
It would be good to fly out on the 12th. Then, on the 11th, we could buy all
our sweet ration for the next ten-day period and eat it on the plane out. Then I
think even the memories of this awful hunger would be less painful. What have
I had to go through? Ive eaten a cat, Ive stolen spoonfuls of food from Anfisa
Nikolaevnas saucepans, stolen crumbs from Mother and Ira, sometimes Ive lied
to them and cheated them. Ive stood about freezing in endless queues, shouted and
fought in shop doorways to try to get inside to get 100 g of butter. Ive been caked
in grime and covered with lice, and so exhausted from malnutrition that sometimes
I havent been able to get up from my chair. Its all been so hard to bear! Constant
bombing and shelling, night duty in the school attic, rows and scenes at home over
the division of food. Ive come to know the value every last crumb of bread I can
pick up from the table with my finger, and Ive come to understand, at least partly,
my own coarse, selfish character. As they say, whats bred in the bone will not
come out of the flesh. Will I ever be able to mend my ways?
10 December. The first ten-day period of the month is coming to an end. As
for the question of our evacuation, its still up in the air. Its agonising to know
that every day your strength is draining away, every day you are becoming sicker
from not eating enough, and the road towards death, death from hunger, is like
a parabola seen from the far end the further you go, the quicker it happens,
this process of gradual dying. Yesterday at the canteen a woman in the queue was
telling me that five people in our building have died of hunger already. And there
are planes flying out to Vologda. Everyone who arrives in Vologda is given a whole
800 g of bread, and as much more as they want if they pay for it. And butter, soup,
porridge, and a meal not liquid slop, but a meal made out of solid products you
can name: porridge, bread, potatoes or vegetables. What a contrast with Leningrad!
If only we could escape from this deadly hunger, escape from this ever-present
fear of death, start all over again, live a peaceful life in some village somewhere in
the countryside forget all the awful things weve gone through. Thats what Im
dreaming of now
Misfortune hasnt made me stronger, it has just weakened me. It turns out Im
a selfish person. But I feel Im powerless to mend my ways at the moment. All the
same, I have to make a start! What if tomorrow goes like today? Today I had to
get spice biscuits and bring them home, but on the way back, I couldnt stand it
any more and ate a quarter of a biscuit. Thats how my selfishness reveals itself.

1
A quotation from the song Happy Wind from the Soviet film Children of Captain Grant (19367) adapted from a
novel by Jules Verne. The quote is originally from the Gospels: For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh
findeth (Matthew 8:8).
 48

Tomorrow, though, Ill try to bring all the biscuits home. All of them! Every last
one!! Then, even if I am heading straight for death from starvation, even if my body
has swollen up and Im sick with dropsy, at least I will know that I did the right
thing, that I have willpower. I need to prove it to myself tomorrow. I wont eat a
single piece of the food I buy, not a single piece. If we arent evacuated and Im
still hoping for evacuation I have to be able to support Mother and Ira. Then
therell only be one solution left to go to work in an army hospital. Actually, I
already have a plan. Mother can go to work as a librarian in one of the new hospitals
and I can be her assistant, or an educational worker. Ira can come with us
Ive been in such a horrible mood today and yesterday. I couldnt even keep
the smallest part of my promise. I took half a sweet out of the sweets I bought, and
I stole 40 g out of 200 g of dried apricots. Actually, I hadnt given my word not to
eat any apricots, but I had given my word about the sweets. After eating that piece
of the sweet, I felt so bad inside that I spat it out or tried to, but couldnt manage.
I also ate a tiny, tiny piece of chocolate. What kind of person am I? Yesterday
Mothers leg swelled up badly. Nothing has been decided yet about evacuation,
Mother cant be included on the list for Building Trust No. 16, and the Smolny
is now our only hope. The Smolny will decide whether or not Mother, Ira and I
live or die. After today, all we have left for the next ten-day period is 200300 g
of cereal and 300 g of meat. We also have only 650 g of sweets and we have still
to get 200 g of Irinas sugar ration. Half of Mothers ration card for the second
ten-day period has already been used up, and all we have in reserve is Iras (150 g)
and mine (180 g). But on the face of it, were preparing to emigrate, getting things
together, preparing ourselves
Only two ten-day periods left before the New Year. Where will we be then?
What will have become of us? All the New Year decorations will lie abandoned
in their drawers this year whats the point of all their glitter and finery now?
Nobody in Leningrad will be thinking of decorating trees this year. If we are still
alive on 1 January, we might remember last years New Year celebrations just as if
we were remembering some dream: the fir trees with burning candles, the supper
on 1 January, with so many dishes, spices and sweet things to eat And maybe
but why try to guess what lies in store for you? I wonder how Tina will celebrate
New Year? What will she be thinking on the stroke of midnight on 31 December
1941, when the last page of the calendar is torn off to reveal the first page of the
new calendar, for 1942? Time flies by so fast
The notebook in which I am writing this diary is almost finished. It is as if the
diary itself will decide how long I keep it.
12 December (continued). Its 5 oclock and Mother is still not back. Something
bad must have happened. Either the business with the ration card has come to
 49

light and perhaps theyve even kept Mother back at the office, or she has had an
accident. Perhaps even now she is in the hospital, or even the mortuary. Anything
could have happened
Its all because of the ration card. And why did Mother take the ration card,
anyway? It was because of me, because I was going about looking hungry. I
pushed her into committing a crime. Perhaps Mother and Ira will die or end up
destitute because of me, and Tina will suffer, not to mention the harm I will have
done myself. Its all my fault! If only I hadnt given in and been so miserable and
downhearted, it wouldnt have happened. It was thanks to me that Mother decided
to commit a crime, so I ought to take the punishment on myself. If I cant, and if I
have really ruined all our lives, Ill put an end to myself. I can, and I must. Ill join
up as a volunteer or a partisan and do something worthwhile on the front at least
Ill die for my country. Ill die, and repay my debt (You reap what you sow;
Youve made your bed, now lie in it).
If the business with the ration card really has come out, Ill send Tina a telegram
We are close to death. No need to help. Forget us Yura. But I just wrote those
words as if I had only myself to worry about. But theres Ira, too. Dying is easy
enough, but I have to set Ira on the right path. Im almost crying as I write this.
Yesterday Mother said: 'I put all my hope in God. Look at me, a Communist, and
yet I believe in God. And so does Ira. Still, God helps those who help themselves.
But I do feel as if I am becoming religious. I look at the icon, and pray to God that
he let this misfortune pass us by.
Its getting later, and Mother still isnt here. Its already after five, shes gone out
and still not come back. And there was shelling somewhere in town today, too
13 and 14 December. I am writing up two days at once which I dont often do
these days. I lay in bed for half a day, then went out to the shop and bought six
cocoa bars made with soya sugar for 30 roubles (each weighing 100 g), and 300 g
of cheese at 19 roubles a kilo. I had an accident on the way back, and when I got
home I had only 350 g of cocoa and the cheese left. There was a scene with Mother
and Ira. When Mother got back from the District Party Committee she said that
weve now been put on the list of those who will be evacuated by motor transport, in
the convoy of the Peoples Commissariat for Construction. Both the District Party
Committee and the District Soviet say this will take place between the 15th and
20th of December. Tomorrow it looks as if well find out about the plane too. We
have no food in the house at all, except for the 100 g of bread, which Mother got in
exchange for a packet of tobacco
15 December. Each day I live here brings me a step closer to suicide. Theres no
way out. Its a dead end. I cant live like this any more. Awful, awful hunger. Once
again we havent heard anything about evacuation. Its getting so hard to live.
 50

Hard to live without knowing why youre alive, dragging out your days, hungry
and cold. When it is twenty-five or thirty degrees below zero outside, the cold cuts
through even felt boots in ten minutes. I cant stand it. And then theres Mother
and Ira. I cant deprive them of their share of bread. I cant do it, because I know
the value of every crumb of bread now. But I see they share their food with me, and
louse that I am, I swipe their last crust from under their noses. Theyre so upset by
this that Mother told me yesterday, with tears in her eyes, that she wished I had
choked on the 1015 g piece of bread I had stolen from them. This hunger is so
awful! If somebody were to offer me a type of deadly poison which would kill me in
my sleep, without making me suffer, then I would take it. I want to live, but I cant
live like this. But I want to live! So what am I supposed to do?
So thats it. Ive lost my honesty, and my faith in my own honesty, and now
Ive sealed my fate. Two days ago I was sent out to buy sweets. Not only did I buy
cocoa with sugar, instead of sweets (hoping that Ira would refuse to eat it, which
would mean I would get more) but I also took half the cocoa myself (and there
was about 600 g, the entire share for the next ten days) and made up a story about
how Id had three packets of cocoa stolen off me on the way home, I put on quite
a show, with tears in my eyes, I swore to Mother Pioneers honour that I hadnt
taken a single packet. Then, after looking on hard-heartedly as Mother cried and
lamented the loss of our sweets, I ate the cocoa in secret. Today, coming back
from the bakers, I took 25 g of bread from Mother and Ira and ate it in secret. And
today in the canteen I ate a bowl of crayfish soup, rissoles with a side dish, and one
and a half portions of kissel. All I took back for Mother and Ira was one and a half
portions of kissel, and I took part of that for myself, too, once I got home.
I have begun to go down the slippery slope towards dissipation, unprincipled
behaviour, depravity and disgrace. Im unworthy, both as a son and as a brother.
Im a selfish person, the type who forgets his loved ones when life gets hard.
And meanwhile, while Im carrying on like this, Mother is wearing herself out
completely. She goes running from office to office in the snow and the freezing
cold, with her swollen legs and her bad heart, without proper winter footwear or
a piece of bread to keep her going, making desperate attempts to get us out of the
city. Ive lost all hope that well be evacuated. That hope has gone. Food has taken
over from the rest of the world in my mind. Everything else simply exists for the
sake of food, or is merely a means to get hold of food
Im done for. My life is over. Whatever lies ahead, it isnt life. I only want two
things now, I want to die, right now, and I want Mother to read this diary. Let her
curse me, as a dirty, uncaring, hypocritical beast. Let her disown me. I have sunk
too low. Too low
What is going to happen? Could it be that death wont come for me? I am hoping
 51

for a quick and painless death, not death from hunger, which now stalks me like a
gory apparition.
Such misery. Such shame and pity when I look at Ira. Will I really kill myself?
Will I do it?
If only I could eat! I want food! Food!
24 December. I havent written anything for several days. The 16th, 17th, 18th,
19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd. For eight days I havent written a thing.
Something has changed in me. I think a change for the better has taken place in
my character. The turning point was when I lost Iras sugar ration card. The way I
behaved towards Mother and Ira back then was so mean. I wasnt paying attention
in the shop and I lost 200 g of sugar, 100 g of chocolate for Mother and Ira and 150
g of sweets. I want to change, to mend my ways, but I feel that without help from
Mother and Ira, I wont have the strength to start afresh, to live an honest life. I
need them to smooth over its too complicated for me to say what I want to say.
Today, for the first time in ages, I brought home all the sweets I got in the canteen.
And Ive been sharing my bread with Ira and Mother, even though I do sometimes
sneak an extra little piece. But today, when they put aside a share of their sweets
for me Mother gave me a quarter of a sweet (although she took it back again) and
Ira half a sweet, because I had gone out to get spice biscuits, sweets and oilcake
at the canteen I felt such affection from them that I almost began to cry. These
were the same people I had lied to so badly, and whats more, they knew I had
lied to them. Its amazing what a difference it makes when other people are kind
to you. But then, Mother again the same mother took away a piece of spice
biscuit, promising me an extra sweet (and then took the extra sweet herself), and
Ira the same Ira cried when Mother gave us both the same amount of sweets,
so I gave Ira some of my sweet later, and she ended up having more. Though its
true, I did something bad today too. I hid a piece of spice biscuit from Mother and
Ira. That was bad.
The District Party Committee is promising Mother that shell be evacuated on
28 December. Now Mother has gone to them to see about this. If they put off our
evacuation till 1 January, we are done for, as we only have enough coupons left for
two more days, or three at a pinch. And thats all. Mother is becoming more and
more sick. Her legs are swollen right up to the hip. I am absolutely covered in lice.
My face is swollen, and so is Iras. Today we had the last of the sweets. Tomorrow
our cereal will run out. Then, the day after tomorrow, we will run out of meat and
oil. And then
I feel a quiet, oppressive sense of sadness. A painful, difficult feeling. Sorrow,
together with a hopeless, heavy sense of grief. And maybe something else, too. When
I go out of the kitchen into the rest of the apartment, I remember all the days and
 52

evenings spent here in the past. In the kitchen there is still some illusory trace of our
past life, our life before the war. The political map of Europe is still on the wall, there
are pots and pans, crockery, sometimes a book open on the table, the pendulum
clock on the wall. It is warm when the stove is lit. But I want to walk around the rest
of the apartment again. I put on my padded coat, my cap with earflaps, tighten my
belt, pull on my mittens and open the door to the corridor. Its freezing out there.
My breath comes in thick clouds, the cold creeps in at my neck and I find myself
hunching up against the cold. The corridor is empty. The four chairs belonging to
Anfisa Nikolaevna stand stacked on top of each other, and there are boards up against
the wall from a cupboard that has been broken up for firewood. We used to have
three rooms to ourselves, but now only two of them belong to us. The room nearest
the kitchen is occupied by the Ivs. Enough said. Their stove is always crackling
away merrily, appetising smells come from beneath their door, their faces glow
with happiness and with having plenty to eat. And right next door is an empty room,
the walls covered in brown paper. The window is broken, and a cold draft blows in
from outside. Theres a bare oak table against the wall and a bare bookshelf in the
corner, covered in dust and cobwebs What is this place? Its our old dining room,
a room that used to be a place of fun and laughter, a place to do homework, to rest
and enjoy ourselves. Once (it seems a long time ago now) there was a sofa in here,
a dresser, chairs, leftover food from lunch on the table and books on the bookshelf,
and Id be lying here on the sofa reading The Three Musketeers, eating a roll with
butter and cheese, or munching on some chocolate. It would be warm in the room
and I would be always happy with my life, with my supper and my 1 well, I didnt
have a wife, but I had games, magazines, chess and films. Back then I would get
upset about missing some play that was on at the theatre. And often, I wouldnt eat
all day, because I preferred to play volleyball or see my friends then there was the
Leningrad Palace of Pioneers, with its events, its reading room and its games; with
its history club and chess club, and the desserts you used to get in the canteen, and
all the concerts and dances All that happiness I was unaware of at the time the
happiness of living in the USSR during peace time, of having a loving mother and
aunt who cared about you, of knowing that nobody would take away your future.
That was happiness. The next room along is a dreary, dark little cell full of all sorts
of junk: theres a chest of drawers, some dismantled beds, two writing desks, one
stacked on the other, and a sofa, all covered in dust. Everything is shut and packed
away to lie here for who knows how long maybe a thousand years
The cold has driven us out of this room too. But there used to be a stove here, we
would cook on it omelettes, sausages and soup. And Mother would sit here late at
night, working by the light of the table lamp.
1
A quotation from Alexander Pushkins Eugene Onegin.
 53

Sometimes wed wind up the gramophone in here, and there would be laughter,
and a huge New Year tree up to the ceiling, and we would light the candles, and
Tina would come and Mishka would come, and there would be piles of sandwiches
on the table with all sorts of fillings, and dozens of sweets and spice biscuits on the
tree (nobody ever ate the biscuits). Everything you could imagine! But now its
empty (or at least it seems so), cold and dark. Theres no longer any reason to look
inside this room
3 January. This will be almost the last entry in this diary. Im afraid that I wont
be able to finish either the entry, or the diary itself, that I wont be able to write The
End on the last page. Somebody else, instead, will write the word Death. And I
want so badly to live, to believe, to feel! But therell be no evacuation till spring,
when the trains begin to run along the Northern Railway Line and I wont live that
long. I am swollen all over, every cell in my body is overloaded with water. So all my
organs are probably swollen up, too. I dont have the energy to move, to get up from
the chair, to walk. Too much water and not enough food, thats the problem. Ive
been drinking, drinking, drinking, and now my bodys swollen up. Mother and Ira
have had enough of me. They are going to leave me. Mother is in such a state now
shes on the point of losing her grip on reality She keeps telling me, just like she
used to, that she and Ira will get out of here, but that I wont be able to go anywhere.
What kind of a worker would I make? What kind of a student? I might work or study
for a week or two, but then Id croak Is that really whats going to happen? Death
is staring me in the face death. And I cant escape it. I cant go to the hospital
because Im crawling with lice. O Lord, what am I to do? Im going to die, but I
want so badly to live, to get away from here and live! But at least Ira may get out of
here alive. How horrible it all is. Mother has become so rough now. She beats me
sometimes and shes always shouting. I dont blame her, though. Im a parasite, a
burden on her and Ira. Death, death is staring me in the face. And I dont have any
hope, only fear that Ill force my own mother and sister to die together with me.
4 January. The only thing that can deliver us now is God, if he or anything
like him exists. If he saves us now, I will never again have to lie to my mother or
blacken my own good name. If we are allowed to evacuate now, my name will
become sacred to me again. Ill swear on my life to put all this vile deceit behind
me for ever and lead a life of honest toil, in some village somewhere, and help my
mother live out the end of her days happily and peacefully. Faith is the only thing
that can put me back on my feet: faith in God, faith that fortune will not abandon
the three of us, faith that Pashin at the District Party Committee will tell us we can
go. If not, Im done for. But I want to stay behind, or rather I would, but I cant
We must leave tomorrow. Ill be able to make it up to Ira and Mother. Lord, only
save me, send me evacuation, save all three of us, Mother, Ira and me!
 54

6 January. Im almost completely unable to walk or to work. I have almost no

strength left at all. Mother is barely able to walk either. I cant even imagine now
how she is managing to get about. She is always hitting me now, telling me off and
yelling. She has these nervous fits of rage, and then she cant stand the sight of me,
this useless person, feeble from lack of energy, starving and suffering, barely able
to shuffle from place to place, always in her way and pretending to be sick and
helpless. But this helplessness isnt an act. It isnt! It isnt a pretence, all my strength
is leaving me, ebbing away, drifting away. And time stretches out, on and on, so
long, so long...Oh God, what is happening to me?
 56

Tanya Rudykovskaya kept her diary every day, in hand-sewn notebooks made from the
paper her mother, who was a teacher, brought back to their house in Ozerki from the school
where she worked. At the time, Ozerki was a dacha suburb to the north of Leningrad;
nowadays it is a station on the city metro. The family had moved to Ozerki from their city
apartment a few years before the outbreak of war. Tanyas father belonged to an aristocratic
family that could trace its ancestry back to the fifteenth century (though he concealed his
family origins after the Revolution, as members of the nobility were often persecuted under
the Soviet regime and their professional life could suffer as a result). His mothers great-
grandfather had been personal physician to General Raevsky and had also attended the
great Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, whom Raevsky had befriended during a journey to
the Caucasus in 1820.
It was quieter and more peaceful out at the dacha at Ozerki than in the city, at least for
a while. In November 1941, the trams stopped running, and Tanyas father, whose physical
state had deteriorated, was not able to make the daily ten-kilometre journey to the Red
Vyborg factory where he worked. The only member of the family now working was Tanyas
mother. And at the start of the New Year in 1942, Tanya, following the example of her older
brother and her father, decided to keep a diary.
At first sight, Tanyas diary makes for monotonous reading. Essentially, it consists of
weather reports and painstakingly detailed and thorough accounts of what she has to eat
every day during the Siege of Leningrad. Not a single ounce or crumb of food has been left
out. The sheer number of these records, and their monotony, is oppressive; it is as if, by
writing in this way, Tanya was trying to prolong the sensation of having at least something
in her stomach. After a while, however, the reader begins to notice other information that
punctuates these notes (against Tanyas will, it seems, as her intention appears to be simply
to report on food and the weather). And only then does the reader understand the impact the
siege had on people, the impact it had already had on nine-year-old Tanya. Her diary is
an account of the deaths of her close relatives, told in the same tone she uses to write about
having sardines for breakfast, and in the same breath. The effect is devastating.
Tanya Rudykovskaya graduated from a cinema engineering institute and was one of
the young Soviet people who went out to try to conquer the virgin lands in Khrushchevs
agricultural campaign. She has three grown-up sons, and worked in the Svetlana factory in
Leningrad until her retirement. She has published thirteen collections of poetry.
Today Tanya lives on the same street as she did during the war. Only three houses on
the street are still inhabited; the rest were devastated by the siege, and part of a shell from a
Soviet anti-aircraft gun can still be seen protruding from the roof of her veranda. For Tanya,
the numbered notebooks of her diary are precious beyond words. It is very painful for me to
read them now. Before I start to read them, I have to eat something first.
What do your siege diaries mean to you? we asked Tanya.
Her answer was simple: They are my life, she told us.
 57

1942
January
1st. A clear, sunny day. For breakfast, one and a half cups of cocoa, two biscuits,
soup and beetroot salad. For dinner, sorrel soup, then meat rissoles. Kissel1 made with
cocoa and tea in the evening.
2nd. A frosty day. I had a pain in my side. For breakfast a sardine, fifteen pieces of
beetroot, bread, coffee and milk. At school there was a New Year party, they gave us
presents. There was lunch soup with buckwheat groats, a meat rissole and macaroni.
In the evening, we had soup left over from dinner and tea.
3rd. In the morning: coffee without milk, soup. A frosty, dull day. Papa killed the
last duck. There were already no chickens left. I got five biscuits, a soya sweet, two
pieces of chocolate, and some almonds (nuts) as presents. For dinner, soup with bones.
Pearl barley in the evening.
5th. A slight wind, but not cold. Snowy and cloudy. Beetroot salad in the morning.
Gelya brought a whole crate and bucket of swede peelings, and a few potato peelings,
from Kamenka. We had sour cabbage soup for dinner and two rissoles each made of
coffee grounds and swede and potato peelings. In the evening we each had another
rissole like that. Mama went with her pupils to a New Year party at a theatre on the
Fontanka. They had a three-course meal there: pickle soup, a rissole with buckwheat
and jelly. She took the train there and back.
6th. Frosty, windy. In the morning, two each of the same rissoles again. For dinner,
pickle soup with two big bones and two little ones. In the evening, Gelya took food out
to Borzik but he wasnt there. Mama went to look for him but couldnt find him. Borzik
is gone hes been eaten2. In the evening, tea with jam, half a glass of wine and two
fritters made of potato and swede peelings. At ten oclock in the evening Auntie Anfisa
brought some milk. On the 5th we gave Kimka (the cat) away to a new home. I went to
Yelizaveta Fyodorovna to ask for some milk to add to oat husks but she didnt give me
any, because her cow isnt producing any milk.
7th. Windy, some snow, frost. In the morning had two of the rissoles made of potato
and swede peelings again (I will call them No. 1 fritters), one and a half cups of cocoa
instead of coffee, one biscuit and bread and butter. Pickle soup for dinner. Two small
bones, two pieces of liver, three and a quarter small pancakes each. I had a cup of tea
and three cups of water. In the evening a tablespoon of wheat porridge, tea with wine.
Alexander Mikhaylovich came and told stories about Jesus. It was a special day because
it was Christmas according to the old calendar3. We lit the candles on the tree.
1
A dessert usually made with fruit juice thickened with corn starch
2
Borzik is a common name for a dog in Russian. By the winter of 19412, dogs and cats were being stolen and killed
for meat.
3
After the Revolution, the Russian state adopted the Gregorian calendar to bring it into step with the rest of Europe,
while the Orthodox Church continued to use the Julian calendar. This means that the dates of the church holidays are
out of step with the official calendar.
 58

9th. Frosty, clear, sunny, calm. In the morning a tablespoon of flour gruel. A rash
came up on my face and chest. Papa took my temperature. It was 36.3, but Mama
wanted to call the doctor. For dinner we had mushroom soup with the last of the white
macaroni and bones. In the evening, four tablespoons of flour gruel. Tea with wine.
10th. I didnt get up. The doctor came. Frosty, clear, quiet. I dont remember what
we ate, as I have been catching up on the 10th, 11th and 12th.
13th. Frosty, clear, calm. I got up. Thin soup with noodles for breakfast. Swapped
a piece of bread with Grandma for three pieces of sugar. Played the piano. Dusted.
Dinner was potato soup with millet and bones. In the evening, two tablespoons of fried
potatoes and a bread ring. Lit the candles on the tree. It was a special day because it was
New Year, according to the old calendar. Uncle Sasha came to see us. He came on foot,
and stayed the night. The electricity came on between 6.30 and 7.
16th. Today was Grandmas birthday. She was 79. For breakfast: coffee with milk,
soup with noodles. I gave Grandma one and a half biscuits, two pieces of sugar and
one pistachio nut. Mama gave her sugar, Papa gave her a potato, Gelya didnt give her
anything. For dinner, rich soup with roots and three ladles of semolina. For supper,
thin soup with noodles. Grandma gave us each a rusk and a quarter of a small sweet.
Mama got us some white bread, so we had a piece of rye bread each and a piece of white
bread each. Snowy. Calm, but not cold.
17th. For breakfast: soup with noodles. Kimka has disappeared. They say shes
died. For dinner, beetroot soup, bones, one No. 1 fritter.
Gelya went to Kamenka and brought back some bones and a few swede peelings. A
light wind. Clear. Quite cold. Mama went out to the school on duty.
19th. Two bones and one No. 1 fritter for breakfast. For dinner, soup with
buckwheat, we saved some for Mama. I went to school to get Mamas dinner1. The
teacher was there. We had bones for supper. Uncle Fedya died. Mama came back from
town with 200 g of bread for Papa from town and a small piece of chocolate each for me
and for Gelya. She also brought a sheet, a towel, two pieces of glue2. Frosty, calm and
clear. We took down the tree.
20th. Frosty, sunny, clear, a bit windy. For breakfast, a little thin soup with noodles.
Mama brought a jar of porridge back from school for Papa. Papa fainted last night.
I went to school to get dinner. Dinner was three boiled potatoes and soup with rice.
Auntie Anfisa sold us half a litre of milk. Supper was one tbsp. of buckwheat porridge,
a piece of bread with butter and cheese and a second piece of bread without anything.
23rd. Frosty, clear, calm. Breakfast: one tbsp. fried potato with meat, coffee with
milk. Annushka is doing the washing, so there has been a fire in the stove since this

1
A great many work places had canteens attached to them; these canteens played an essential part in keeping people alive
as food became more scarce.
2
Carpenters glue, made from animal bones, could be boiled until it turned into a sort of jelly which could be eaten.
 59

Tanya was only 9 years old when she began to witness members
of her family die from hunger during the siege of Leningrad, and
when she took to writing her diary.

She has survived to the present day in the same house, in which she managed to live out the siege without
dying of hunger. She showed us a few photographs, now yellow with age, and these precious pages of her
carefully preserved notebooks.
Photo from the archive of Tanya Grigorova-Rudykovskaya.
 60

morning. Zira came. Sour cabbage soup and bones for dinner, two tbsps. porridge with
half a sausage. Supper: one tbsp. wheat porridge. Mama let Gelya lick the spoon, and
there was still porridge on it. I asked to lick the spoon first, and Mama gave it to Gelya.
Papa is feeling better. My head ached towards evening.
24th. Frosty, windy, clear. Breakfast: three tbsps. wheat porridge, coffee with
milk, bread and butter. Gelya went out to Kamenka but came back without anything.
For dinner, mushroom soup with noodles, half a ladleful of buckwheat porridge. The
BREAD RATION has been increased!!! Now, non-manual workers get 300 g, children
and dependants 250 g and manual workers 400 g! Papa is well. I went to see Zira. Supper
was one tbsp. of a pie made of peelings, a piece of bread and butter and another piece of
bread with two bits of cheese. After tea, Mama made pastry.
25th. Today, Mama, Granny and I all have our name day. Mama gave me a
sugar lump, Granny a biscuit and a sugar lump, Papa gave me a piece of bread and
butter with four sugar lumps and some berries from the bottom of the fruit liqueur on
top (in other words, a cake). Gelya gave me four lead pencils. For breakfast four
small pancakes, a piece of bread and butter, coffee and milk. Papa got up with us for
breakfast and lunch, then went back to bed. Four rice pies for dinner, pickle soup,
three duck bones with a little meat, three ladles of kissel. Frosty, windy, clear and
sunny. In the evening, Papa got up and played the piano, and we danced, then we
all had supper together. Supper: three tbsps. beetroot salad, one dry bread ring, one
teaspoon of wine
FEBRUARY 1942
2nd. Mama went out to the shop at seven in the morning and came back at half
past nine with 900 g of sugar. One plate of flour soup each for breakfast, two No. 1
fritters with bread. (For breakfast and supper we have soup from the canteen with no
roots, just water and powder which is all ready you just have to heat it up. At dinner
time, we cook soup at home with roots.) Mama lost her bread ration card not all of
it, just part. She went out to Murinsky again to get Papas ration cards and didnt get
them. Its such a shame. Mushroom soup with bread for dinner. Mama came back at
nine in the evening, bringing bread. Maria Vasilevna, a teacher from school, came.
Slightly windy, cloudy, snow now and again. Supper: one potato, half a beetroot,
bread.
3rd. Breakfast was a little fried meat and noodles. In the morning, after ten, Mama
went to Murinsky again to get the ration cards. When she was getting out the cabbage to
make cabbage soup, she gave Gelya and me a little bit of cabbage. Later, when I went
out to the kitchen after having coffee, I heard her telling Gelya off. He had probably
been trying to steal some cabbage. On 25 January, I made a promise to myself not to
steal any more food, and since then I havent taken a thing. Supper was sauerkraut soup
and two bones.
 61

The most painful thing about Tanyas diary is not even the death of
family members, but the way she recorded their deaths in between
descriptions of the food she ate every day during the siege. Tanya
may have been staring death in the face, but beneath the surface,
her thirst for life remained undiminished.

Food ration cards were at the very heart of life during the siege of Leningrad. To lose a ration card owing to
accident, carelessness or theft, as Tanya Rudykovskayas mother did one day, was a fatal mistake that could
condemn the owner to a long, drawn-out death sentence.
Photo from the archive of Tanya Grigorova-Rudykovskaya.)
 62

6th. Mama went out at three oclock in the morning to queue at the shop. Gelya went
to take her place at nine oclock but they wouldnt let him in, and Mama had already
got as far as the doorway. Pea soup for breakfast. After seven, Alexander Mikhaylovich
came by. He knocked, and we all thought it was Mama, but she came home at eleven,
with butter and bread. Lukich, the son of Luka the carter came. Dinner was soup with
dumplings. The dumplings were made of rye flour (very simple, you just add water to
the flour and thats the dough). We fished out the dumplings and ate them separately
with butter. One piece of bread and butter too. Clear, sunny, calm, frosty. For supper
four potatoes and a piece of bread and butter. In the evenings Im the one who lights
the samovar and in the mornings Gelya does it. Yuzik DIED at 5 in the morning today.
7th. Split pea soup for breakfast, but made from powdered peas, so it was like broth.
For now we are having our bread with butter, when we start having it without butter
Ill write it down here. Cloudy, windy, mild, with a dusting of snow. Papa is feeling
very much better. Yesterday before dinner he managed to walk round all the rooms. He
has begun to walk about a bit again. Dinner was (thick) soup with wheat groats. After
dinner, Gelya washed his feet. Nothing for supper, just bread and butter.
8th. Sunday. For breakfast, we had soup with white noodles, cocoa instead of
coffee. Mama found the sunflower oil had gone; there was only water in the bottle. It
turned out that Gelya had drunk the oil and replaced it with water. At half past nine,
Papa felt ill and almost fainted. He said that he had a bad pain in his stomach. Mama,
Gelya and I pulled him over to the stove in the dining room still in his chair, and from
there we managed to get him across onto the trunk, so that he could lie down on it. For
dinner (thick) soup with rice, boiled beetroot with two small meatballs. Gelya went
off to Sytny Market, but not to the market itself, he went to get a radio set from Uncle
Fedya. He went at eleven oclock and came back after six. Cloudy, snowy, a bit windy,
cold. For supper bread and butter, and nothing else.
Now Im going to start a new diary.
NOTEBOOK No. 2, 1942
9th. Papa has been in bed since the 8th. For breakfast, meat jelly made from glue (I
dont know what sort). Papa got up for dinner. Dinner was soup (thin) with dumplings.
We fished out the dumplings and ate them separately with butter. I had three teaspoons
of kissel, Gelya had four and Mama shared the rest out between Granny, Papa and
herself. She gave Gelya and me less because Granny saw Gelya stealing kissel. A
cloudy, cold, calm day. Papa has started getting up to eat with us again. For supper we
had some of the same jelly made from glue that we had in the morning. Granny went to
see Darya Andreevna. Auntie Anfisa came to say that Nelka (her dog) had been taken.
11th. Breakfast: four tbsps. of thin gruel made from rye flour. Papa had half a bowlful
(the black one). Granny doesnt get soup when we have it for breakfast, but today it
was gruel and she didnt get any. THE BREAD RATION HAS BEEN INCREASED!
 63

Dependants now get 300 g, non-manual workers 400 g, children 300 g. Now we will
get 1.6 kg of bread. Papa didnt get up for dinner, as he felt ill in the morning. Dinner
was soup with millet. Now that Mama has begun bringing home soup from the school
canteen, and we add some leaves and roots at home, it is quite good. Mama adds butter
to it. Clear, sunny, windy, snowy. The wind dropped in the evening but it was really
strong this morning. Mama went to Shuvalovo for bread. She went out after five and
came back after eight. She brought back bread. I lost a piece of bread and a sugar lump.
Nothing for supper.
20th. Breakfast: two tbsps. of fried noodles. Gelya wound the clock. Frosty, misty
and cloudy. By evening, the frost on the windows had melted. Mama was on duty in the
childrens home from two oclock till eight. Dinner was soup (thick) with buckwheat
groats, no roots, only half an onion for each of us. Granny washed me in the tub. Supper
was two tbsps. of fried noodles. Gelya managed to get some dried potato at the shop; he
jumped the queue.
21st. Breakfast: meat jelly from glue, Granny had some noodles, because she
doesnt eat meat jelly. Frosty, clear, calm and sunny. Gelya got some meat from the
cooperative. Mama was on duty at the childrens home again from two until eight.
Dinner was mushroom soup (thick) with rice. Yesterday I played the piano for a whole
hour. Granny gave Gelya a wash. Towards evening, a strong, icy wind got up. Today I
played the piano for a whole hour again. Supper: three tbsps. of barley porridge.
22nd. Breakfast was a little buckwheat porridge. Mama went out about eight oclock
for duty at the school, and Gelya to the cooperative. Frosty, clear and sunny. Windy
in the morning, then calm. Gelya brought home some millet, pearl barley and butter.
Mama was meant to come back at two oclock but she got held up and came back at
four. Peas for dinner. Gelya started to cry about not having been given enough bread
and soup, even though Mama gave him extra helpings two pieces of bread and half a
ladleful of soup. We gave Papa a wash we washed his hair and the his top half, down
to his waist. Supper was three tbsps. boiled dried potato, with butter and a piece of bread
and butter. Mama went off to the childrens home again at about eight, to be on duty.
25th. Mama came back after eight. Breakfast was thin pease porridge, bread and
butter. I went to the shop and when I got back I told Gelya they had cocoa, so he went
and got some. Mama was on duty at the childrens home. Dinner was cabbage soup
and a small meat rissole. Frosty, a bit windy, clear and sunny. Annushka came. Auntie
Anfisa came too. Supper: Gelya and I had two and a half tbsps. each of pease porridge,
topped with onion fried in sunflower oil, lovely and juicy. Papa and Mama had three
tbsps. each of buckwheat porridge with oil and onion, and Granny gave her portion of
porridge to Mama. We had bread without butter. We are running out of sugar.
26th. Breakfast was a little buckwheat porridge, bread and butter. We got some meat
and peas at the cooperative. Frosty, windy, clear and sunny. Papa lay in bed all day. He
 64

has stopped coming through for supper or breakfast; the last time he got up to eat with
us was yesterday, for dinner.
Dinner was soup (thick) with pearl barley. One small meatball and half a tbsp. of
beetroot. Annushka did our washing, we gave her cabbage soup, a piece of bread with
mustard and some tea, and Granny gave her her own two pieces of bread and a mug of
coffee. Mama is on duty at the childrens home today from eight at night until eight in
the morning. Supper: three tbsps. millet porridge, bread and butter. Mama washed her
feet. I put a patch on my stocking which turned out well, it didnt look too bad.
27th. At 8.40 this morning, PAPA DIED. Gelya went out to fetch Savina (our
doctor friend). By the time she got here Papa had already died. When Mama came back
from work she went straight in to Papa. She kissed him and stroked him, and he tried to
smile, but he couldnt. There were tears rolling down his face.
Breakfast: pease porridge (thin) half a tbsp millet porridge (Mama had been keeping
it for Papa), bread and butter. Granny didnt eat any soup or porridge. We got sugar
at the cooperative and coffee instead of sugar. Snowy, clear, sunny and windy, then
a snowstorm. Dinner was soup with buckwheat groats, no roots, just onion and some
herbs. Gelya went to see Alyosha Lukich, but he had been evacuated. In the evening
Gelya went off, he was meant to be going to Shuvalovo for some reason. When he came
back, he said he hadnt gone to Shuvalovo, but had gone to our shop, and bought 1.2 kg
of cranberries and bread. Somebody cut down our birch tree, but we had taken the top
of the tree off anyway. Supper was millet porridge, bread and butter.
MARCH 1942
1st. Lay in bed. I had a pain in my side and was sick.
2nd. I got up but was too weak to write. I remember that Nina Kuznetsova came.
4th. Fried noodles for breakfast. Frost, sunny and windy. After dinner, Mama and
Gelya cut down the two birch trees. Dinner: swede soup and one sausage. Mama was
on night duty at the childrens home. All the teachers in the school are ill, so she has to
work a lot. There are only one or two teachers left apart from Mama. Supper: bread and
butter and nothing else.
5th: Breakfast a rissole (very good). Frosty, minus twenty-seven degrees. A sharp
wind, but not strong. Clear and sunny. I went to the cooperative, and we got some
meat. Dinner: soup with noodles. Mama didnt have to go anywhere, so she was at
home. Its so good when we are all together. Supper: millet porridge with butter.
 66

A 14-year-old girl, Lera Igosheva lived in Leningrad at the time of the siege. She had
a friend, Nina, whose mother was manager of the housing committee, and who lived on
the same stair. One day, Lera recalls, Ninas mother passed on a proposal to my mother
through Nina: she knew someone who wanted to buy my bookcase and the rug on the wall
over my bed, in return for bread. But this prospective buyer was driving a hard bargain
and offering very little. The Igoshevas agreed, and sold their furniture. Some years after the
war, on her return to Leningrad, Lera, now married to a man called Trotsenko, went to visit
her old friend Nina, and in Ninas room she saw her own bookcase and rug.
At that moment, as Lera describes it, something inside her snapped. She was staggered
by the fact that her friend and her friends mother, the housing manager, had not only been
living off the ration cards of dead souls1 but had, in addition, used their own cards to
barter.
Its a matter for their own conscience, says Lera. Valeria Nikolaevna, to use her adult
name who now now lives in Vladivostok. Together with her mother, she was evacuated
along the so-called Road of Life, a road across the ice of the frozen Lake Ladoga, which
was opened up in November 1941. She joined a naval flotilla on the Onega and then an
army hospital at the front. She graduated from the mathematics faculty of Leningrad
University and taught mathematics at the Far East State Technical Institute in Vladivostok
for more than fifty years.
But Lera is also tormented by her conscience to this day. Her mother also worked in the
housing committee, as a book-keeper, and the Igoshev family also acquired extra ration
cards. I try to console myself with the thought that we didnt use the extra bread to buy
things for ourselves, says Lera, and that it only came to a pitiful amount; not even enough
to save my father from starvation.
Lera kept her diary safe during air raids and bombardments by taking it out to the
shelter in a special pocket sewn into her coat lining. In her diary, she told the story of how
her family ate a cat, unable to look one another in the eye, and then, only a few days later,
ate a second cat, this time with barely a scruple. A few years ago, Leras daughter Tatyana
published this diary in a limited edition. Now we include it as part of our book.

1
AreferencetoNikolayGogolsnovelofthesamename.Thehero,Chichikov,isaswindlerwhotriestobuyupdead
soulsorserfsfromlandlordsonpaperinordertoprofitfromthetransactionbyobtainingagovernmentloan.Thereis
aclearparallelbetweenChichikovsactionsandthepracticeofspeculatingusingtherationcardsofdeadpeople(the
housingmanagerwouldhaveaccesstotherationcardofadeadtenant).
 67

12 August 1941 It was on the morning of 22 June, in Moscow. Mama, Papa and
I, together with Uncle Palya and his family, were sitting peacefully having our breakfast
in the dining room, before going out for a walk. At about eleven oclock there was an
announcement: Vyacheslav Molotov was about to give a speech on the radio. We were
very surprised, and prepared ourselves for some unexpected news. But what we heard
was beyond anything we could have imagined. In his speech, Molotov announced that
at 4 oclock on the morning of 22 June, without issuing a declaration of war, Germany
had invaded the USSR.
Ever since that moment, the world has been turned upside down. That very night,
we packed our things in a hurry and left for Leningrad, as Papa had to present himself
to the Military Commissariat.
31 August 1941 But we are living through such difficult times now, people are
nervous and on edge, and all of a sudden Ive started to feel that Mama and Papa dont
love me at all. Theyve often been angry, recently. Actually, Ive started to feel as if I
dont love them, either. Not long ago, when Papa was taken off to dig trenches, Mama
and I had it out with one another. Wed been arguing, and I said, in a rather theatrical,
contrived way, Do you imagine for a moment that I love you? But I want to love
you I really do! These words had quite an effect on Mama, and on me, too. I burst
out crying, and eventually we made it up. I calmed down a little and things got better.
Another thing happened that Ill mention here. I lost some coupons from my ration
card: 200 g of meat coupons and 200 g of sugar coupons. Mama was cross with me, so
I decided to stop eating butter or sugar. I drank black tea with no sugar, and ate bread
without butter. I was surprised to find that it was actually quite easy. I kept it up for ten
days, but then I had to stop, as Mama was starting to get angry.
Now everything is peaceful. Mama and I are managing to stay friends, and not to
argue.
9 September 1941. Ill try to get everything down as quickly as I can.
Yesterday, the people of Leningrad had a baptism of fire. The alert sounded at seven
in the evening. I went off as usual to help count people. Suddenly the sky shook, we
heard anti-aircraft guns and bombs exploding in the distance. German planes appeared
in the sky. I was on the stairs when the gunfire started, on my way to the air-raid shelter.
I can hardly understand, and still less describe, the emotions that came over me. All I
can say is that my arms and legs were shaking, and I was trying not to be afraid The
air raid went on for about an hour and a half. There was fighting over our street and over
our yard. The sky was full of little puffs of white smoke, from anti-aircraft shells. Then
the fighting moved further away, there was less gunfire, and far away in the direction of
Nevsky Prospekt (but much further beyond it) we could see two huge columns of smoke.
The smoke rose and fanned out in a black cloud, and soon the sky was covered in a dark
cloud glowing pink at the edges from the setting sun. There was something fateful about
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that black cloud. We orderlies and communication staff did what we could: preparing
medicines, helping in the air raid shelter, trying to cheer people up. Today was the first
time wed seen active service.
So now Im writing my diary. My heart starts racing whenever I hear a noise like
a bomb falling. Im not afraid for my own sake, but it starts racing all the same. Im
trying to train myself to stay calm. I cant actually believe anything will happen to
me. I think I believe in fate now Im about to go out to get bread for tomorrow.
Then I have a few jobs to do: I need to make a special pocket to carry rusks in, for
one thing. I havent decided yet if Ill take my diary with me when theres an air raid.
I think I will.
20 September 1941. I, Lera Igosheva, during these difficult days, do swear solemnly,
with this diary as my witness, that I will pursue my goals with energy, self-possession
and determination, and that I will spend my time profitably and prudently. I will be
polite, well turned out and generally civilised. I will try to continue with my education
as far as possible, and will continue to keep this diary.
19 September 1941. The girls have been saying it would be a good idea to start up a
wall newspaper1 called Battle Report. Im in favour of the idea too. Mira wanted to
nominate me as the editor. I didnt agree to that, of course. And in any case, Im not
sure if anything will come of it I think we need to get an adult involved, perhaps even
a Party member. Still, if something does come of it, Ill be an active contributor. After
all, its my profession, I really enjoy it.
Adolf Geyn came. Hes quite the young man these days. Now he often comes into
the office (on work matters, naturally). I think there might be something between him
and Zhenya D. But perhaps Im just imagining things. How silly I am!
Im so angry: horribly, furiously angry. As soon as the gunfire starts, Mama makes
me stay right next to her, just as though she had me on a lead. Today I wanted to sit next
to Mirra, but she wouldnt let me. Nina brought in a book and now she and Mirra are
sitting reading together.
Its so stupid. The other girls are sitting happily at the table, having fun, and
meanwhile the four of us Ira and I, together with our mothers, are solemnly enthroned
in the aisle between the beds.
To hell with everything. I need to find some way of letting off steam. Ill try going
to see Papa up in the attic.
4 October 1941. About this diary. Theres been a whole drama connected with it.
Im very anxious to keep it with me if theres an air raid at night. I feel a lot happier
and safer if its with me. After all, Ive been keeping this diary for almost two years,
and it means a lot to me First, I sewed it into my coat, but Mama wouldnt let me
carry it like that. She kept getting angry. So I had to unpick it all. Then I made a belt,
1
A newspaper posted up for all to read, usually in an institution such as a factory or other workplace.
 69

Lera and her mother were unable to save Leras beloved father, and themselves narrowly avoided death.
Photo from the archive of V. Trotsenko.
 70

and hung the diary next to my suspenders, but it was rather uncomfortable, carrying it
like that, and Mama found it again anyway, and got angry. Now I take the diary with
me quite openly every time theres an alert I take it to the shelter inside a newspaper.
Mama isnt entirely happy about it, but shes stopped arguing with me, which is the
main thing. If the worst comes to the worst, I can give it to Nina to look after, though I
really, really dont want to. Nina doesnt even know One day, I was carrying it in my
coat and we had quite a conversation. Nina kept trying to guess what it was: documents,
a book, a pledge of friendship a diary and so on. I said no to everything, including
her guess about the diary. What could I do? I had to tell a lie (just as I lied to Mayka
and Kara). All I said to Nina was that it was the one secret I couldnt share even with
her, my best friend.
So now my diary comes with me everywhere, which is a comforting thought, and
keeps my spirits up.
7 October 1941. Its night. I am on duty at the office. On the 5th, which was a
Sunday, our day off, Papa and I ate at the Astoria. We stood in the queue for six hours
and had a very poor meal. And you hear so much about the Astoria! It was the first time
Id been in a big restaurant and it was a big disappointment. We sat at the same table as
some English people (judging by what I could hear of them). I didnt like the look of
them, especially the men.
Papa and I decided not to spend our days off queuing in the future. But who knows,
things being the way they are, we may have no choice. The food situation is getting
worse and worse. Apparently, the bread ration will be going down after the 15th. What
next? The situation at the front is abysmal. The Germans are close to Leningrad. There
are battles raging on all sides. How will it all end? For some reason, Im not frightened
about the future. The situation in the city is so bad, that Papa has decided it wont be
any worse under the Germans; that things cant get any worse. I dont agree at all. At
the moment, despite all the privations, Im still free. I can live and study But who
knows what it will be like later on?
The schools are supposed to open on the 15th. I dont believe it, but Im still hoping.
How wonderful that would be!
15 October 1941. The news reports are abysmal. The Germans are fighting their
way through to Moscow the Kalinin sector and the whole south of the country (Kiev,
Mariupol, Bryansk and other big cities) have all been captured.
Now if theres an air raid at night, I always take my diary with me. I think Papa has
guessed whats in my newspaper bundle. One day he said to me You ought to burn
that diary. The Germans will be here soon, and what if they find it? I just muttered
something in reply but now I am thinking (seriously) about what he said. What should I
do? Burn it? Perhaps Ill have to, and yet it would be an awful pity! Soon this diary will
be two years old
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Maybe Im just imagining things, because Im lonely, or maybe what happened

back then really did affect me, but for some time now Ive been thinking about Fimka.
I think about him as Im going to sleep. I lie there with my eyes shut and picture him,
and our school, and remember all sorts of things that happened. Im so silly! I keep
wondering where he is now, and what has become of him. I have dreamt of him several
times, and always in the most unlikely scenarios
26 October 1941. I got a letter from Kara. I wrote back to her. I wrote about Fimka,
things Ive never told her. Then I decided not to send the letter. Still, Im not going
to tear it up. Ill put it in my diary instead. I dont want anybody else to know about it
except me.
Letter to Kara:
Hello, Karochka! (this letter is only for you) Dear, dear Kara,
Karisha, you wrote to me that you often think of our crowd. And you asked: what
about me? Well, I even dream about them, fool that I am, and in particular, almost
every night I dream of Kara, Ive never told you about this or written to you about it.
And up until now nobody except me has known anything about it. Im so crazy. But as
youve told me about a lot of things Well, the thing is, I keep dreaming about Fimka.
You know how dreams are always fantastical, unrealistic? Thats the sort of dreams
I keep having. Kara, please dont tell anyone about this. And burn this letter straight
away. Perhaps youll have news of Fimka. If so, please write to me. Im so silly. My
situation is nothing like yours, and even less like Lyusyas, for instance. After all, Fima
doesnt even know anything about it. Its just do you remember back in February
when you were off school sick for a little while? Kara, dont take offence, but that was
a good time for me.
What a time were living through now! Who knows what will have become of us a
month or a year from now? Id like to be able to look into the future. I do wish things
would go back to normal. I wish you and I could sit together again at our desk, in our
wonderful school, then Karisha, if anything should happen to me, please find him
and tell him.
Its evening. Papa has gone to sleep on the ottoman. Mama is in the kitchen. I am
sitting at the table in the living room, writing. Beside me is a book: I am re-reading
Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo. Its such a good book! The radio is off. I dont suppose
you have the radio where you are, but I doubt if things are any the worse for that. I get
sick to death of it
I have finished War and Peace at last. I liked it very much, but I dont at all agree
with Tolstoys view of Napoleon and Kutuzov. He sees them as pitiful creatures at the
mercy of fate, mere labels attached to historical events. Thats not at all how I have
always imagined them, or how I imagine them now. And Natasha?! Was that really
what a girl could expect from life in those days? A beautiful, poetic girl, subtle and full of
 72

life, perceptive, sensitive, a girl who inspires affection in everyone she meets, and then
she turns into a Im not even going to write about it
I want to write about two things that have been on my mind.
Vasily Denisovich came. Yesterday morning, as we drank tea together, he told me
about all sorts of things. He has travelled round Europe, and he told me about Germany,
and about the years of the NEP in the Soviet Union. In his opinion, private trade is
a far superior system, more convenient and more profitable. He spoke about what a
wealth of goods there was in countries with private trade, and how cheap everything
was. He spoke about the German sense of decency and about life in Germany. In his
opinion, if the Germans take Leningrad (which he thinks is inevitable), then life will get
back to the way it was before the Revolution, or become like life in Germany. He thinks
that will be an improvement.
Its certainly something to think about. Ive heard a lot of positive things about the
Germans as well as negative (not on the radio of course, I dont believe a word of what
they say on the radio). I wonder which view will turn out to be right. I dont think I
will gullibly believe either (thats my pride talking). Im not going to go along with Ira
Ks convictions (for instance, her sudden switch to anti-Semitism), Ill just be quite
dispassionate to begin with.
And the other thing: were having a lot of quarrels at home these days. All of us are
sometimes in the right and sometimes in the wrong, but we all keep losing our tempers
and going into huffs. Papa said yesterday and I think he was serious that hes ready
to walk out, however hard it may be. I dont want to take him seriously. I remember
I once talked about walking out myself, and Papa said, Would you really walk out on
your old dad? and I felt so ashamed. Still, what now? Can Papa really be serious? Is it
really so difficult for him? I can often be so horrible, vile and bad-tempered!
Im writing this on duty. Mama didnt wake me as she had promised, so she sat for
two hours on her own. I lost my temper and shouted at her. I know Im in the right,
but I probably shouldnt have acted like that. What will become of us? Its enough to
drive you mad, or make you want to run away. Im such a bad person, so ungrateful and
mean. But surely I can change, cant I? I feel that deep down Im not like this at all. I
want so badly to love others and to respect them, and for others to love me
29 November 1941. I havent written anything for more than a month. Ive gone
through so much, and my opinions about so many things have changed during this
month. Ill try to get everything down in the right order.
We had four good days from the 3rd to the 6th. The schools opened. All sorts of new
impressions. I am in School No. 15, with Nina. There are only 5 classes in the school
All in all, conditions at school are completely different, especially as not many rooms
or offices have escaped damage. We keep our galoshes on, hang our coats up in the
classroom, and keep our satchels with us. When the alert sounds we go to the air-raid
 73

shelter, and during recess we sit in class. All this makes it difficult to study, of course,
but Im so pleased school is open again and that we can study again. And they fed us at
school, too. Soup and kissel.
Of the other girls, the Strun twins are unpleasant, silly girls with very comical,
loud voices. Tanya Rabinovich has a very disagreeable face. Ira Lebedeva, who is in
our school, but in another class, seems nice. As for the others, theres nobody worth
mentioning. A new girl joined our class after everybody else she looked too old for
the 8th grade. She looks like a senior grammar school girl, a swot and a sneak, rather
narrow-minded. As it turns out, she knows the Gorlins well and they are writing to each
other. I sat next to Ira. I got to know Ira best: we walked into school together, and both
of us were learning how to write Gothic script but were not really friends.
But alas, these happy days have gone now, leaving nothing but pleasant memories.
A bomb fell opposite the school, but didnt go off. So were not having classes any
more. Its been almost a month now.
Valya Z.s mother was killed during a bombardment. Poor Valya, what can she be
going through, what can she be feeling? I suddenly felt that I had to go to see her, so I
did. Maybe it wasnt the right thing to do, but I think shell understand.
The celebrations on the 7th of November were rather dull. V. D. came round. The
main event of the day was that we ate well we got hold of some swede. Even eating
swede counts as eating well nowadays.
And then something else happened on the 16th. It was several days ago now, so my
memory of it is a bit hazy. A high-explosive bomb fell on our building, into our yard.
We were lucky: only one person was killed. Our windows were blown out the glass
and the window-frames. It was absolute pandemonium quite frightening. Now I can
look back on it all quite calmly. I got to thinking, back then, of how all of us are busy
with our lives, with our own important affairs, and all of sudden, a bomb drops, and we
all come together and swarm about, repairing our dwellings, forgetting everything else,
and the whole building bustles with life like an anthill.
These are difficult days, full of misery, apathy, and physical discomfort. Its a shame
there is no school, there is nothing to set your sights on, nothing to do. Everything feels
pointless and difficult. I go round the queues all day or sit freezing at home, and in the
evening we get together and cook a meal. Though theres no guarantee well have any
food.
I feel that Im letting myself go, that Im spending my time aimlessly, but what can
I do
Just recently I have begun to feel differently towards my parents. I am now quite
literally in love with my mother. It all began on the memorable day when we went
to wash at the public bathhouse. We went to five bathhouses and ended up going to a
very bad one on Gorokhovaya Street. I was amazed by how Mama behaved on that
 74

day, very impressed by her stamina and how she coped with hardship. I was tired, and
grumpy, and she kept trying to keep my spirits up. And ever since that day Ive seen
her in a different light, as something of an ideal she is beautiful and ladylike, and so
hardworking. At home, she does all the housework, just like a servant, and then puts on
her smart clothes and goes off to work looking like an elegant lady. Dear Mama, how
fond I have grown of you recently! Once I was able to give her a real treat; shed just
come back from duty, cold and tired, and I gave her a nice, affectionate welcome, the
whole place was clean and tidy, and tea was ready. She was so happy. And I felt so good!
I feel very differently towards Papa. Nowadays, we have to be very careful with
food and share out every last piece. In spite of myself, Im beginning to get the nasty
feeling that Papa is rather selfish. Its true, he really is very selfish in all sorts of ways.
He refuses to go on duty, and yet somehow he always wants the best of everything. He
wants me to be at his beck and call and, at the same time, he wants me to be loving and
unaffected. But I cant do it. I cant behave like my papas idea of the perfect daughter.
Were quarrelling a lot, and I feel even more estranged from him. I quarrel with Mama
too everyone is so irritable nowadays (for all sorts of reasons) but I love my dear
mother so much
My relationship with my friends has changed, too. Ive been cutting myself off from
them, distancing myself Im thinking a lot these days. When Im at home with Mama
and Papa in the evenings, I cant write, but I am always making up elaborate letters and
compositions in my mind This is how I would begin one of them: In this world there
is a Tsar. A ruthless Tsar. His name is Hunger (Nekrasov, The Railway).
Hunger is a terrible physical torment. Like other physical torments, it cant be fully
conveyed in words; you have to experience it for yourself. Its a terrible feeling. You
want to eat, to eat anything bread, potatoes, oilcake, meat, sugar, chocolate just so
long as its food, and theres plenty of it. All your other thoughts and feelings become
dulled. All you think about is food, food youve had in the past, or good times still to
come in the future. You imagine how, in the future, the first thing youll do is eat as
much as you like, and exactly how things will be
Porridge in the morning, delicious, hot porridge with butter. Then tea or cocoa,
rye bread, white bread, sugar. Plenty of everything, more than enough of everything
Its funny how often you find your thoughts running along these lines. Its strange to
think how little you used to eat in the past, and how little attention you paid to food,
and so on.
Recently something happened, something that was both nice, but at the same time,
disgusting and horrible. Papa brought home a cat. He actually brought home a live cat
in his briefcase. Before, he used to joke sometimes that we might have to eat cats, but it
never went beyond a joke. I was horrified. Papa said that he was very hungry, that the
cat was for himself, and told me not to worry. I couldnt help myself; I was overcome
 75

by an incredible feeling of loathing and revulsion. I burst out crying and went off to find
Mama. We came back home together. Gradually, I came round a little. I realised that
its just prejudice. We eat pork, and think of it as good meat, but a pig will eat anything.
A cat is actually cleaner. This cat belonged to some friends, it was very clean, it always
ate out of its own dish and was very well fed. So, to cut a long story short, Papa skinned
it, I saw the meat, which looked absolutely fine, quite appealing and we ate the cat.
It was good, there was no strange taste to it, it was rich and satisfying, but we hid our
plates from one another and could barely look one another in the eye as we ate it. Now
I dont want to think about it or remember it. I dont want to eat it again But who
knows, we may have no choice.
The hunger in the city is appalling. Theres nothing to eat. 125 g of bread a day, and
hardly any food in the shops. The worst of it is, you cant even get hold of what food
there is. From the 1st, theyre going to bring in a new system: the ration cards will have
to be used in specific shops. That might make things better
20 December 1941. Once again, a lot of time has passed. Tomorrow this diary will
be two years old. I wonder, will I mark the occasion in some way? Theyre promising to
increase the bread ration that would be good. Life goes on, dull, monotonous and hard.
Two years ago, when I began writing this diary, life was completely different.
One noteworthy event of recent days Papa and I have been making heroic
journeys to get firewood. Papa got 1.5 cubic metres of firewood at the warehouse at
Malaya Okhta. He had to bring the wood home himself within a few days.
Papa and I set out together, taking a childs sledge. It takes about an hour to get to
the warehouse on foot. When we got there, we got to work, picked out 1.5 cubic metres
and set off back again. Thats when things got difficult. We put hardly anything on the
sledge, less than quarter of a cubic metre, but it was a childs sledge and awkward to
handle, the runners kept sinking into the snow. To cut a long story short, we couldnt
budge it. We left some wood behind and somehow managed to get it moving. Before
wed gone any distance at all, we were exhausted. The further we went, the harder it
got. It got dark. We were going really slowly in the dark, stopping all the time for rests.
We talked about all sorts of things. This experience has convinced me of certain truths
about life.
Physical suffering is very hard to bear. Its not only difficult to get it across in words;
as time passes, you cant even imagine what its like any more, its easy to forget. Now,
for instance, as I write this, I feel my description is somehow artificial and not very
convincing
The next day we made the same trip again. We had even less energy, but wed
attached skis to the sledge, and somehow we managed to get the wood home. The next
day, Papa went on his own and I stayed at home. Afterwards, though, I brought all the
logs upstairs to the woodbox in the kitchen all by myself.
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For us, these last four days have been truly heroic. I wont forget them in a
hurry. Now Papa and I have used up even more of our strength. Its a good thing we
managed to get hold of another cat.
We ate the second cat without any feeling of revulsion, happy to be eating
something so nourishing.
Since then, the hunger in the city has got even worse. Theres nothing in the
shops, and almost nothing at home either. By the look of it, we arent the only ones
whove been eating cats. There isnt a single cat to be seen on the streets any more,
not even the most flea-ridden, skinny animal
Mamas extras are a great help to us at the moment. May she be forgiven! And
V. D. is helping. He is doing quite well for himself, of course. He has given us some
food and wine. We also benefited from his ingenuity as a chemist (and were not the
only ones hes helped in this way).
On his advice, we are now making and eating pancakes out of dextrin glue
(which Papa gets from work) together with our bread ration. They taste all right,
and theyre a good source of sustenance, but its still not enough. Were still not
eating our fill.
Were trying out another unusual food now water fleas. Papa found out from
some scientists that you can make soup from water fleas, which are sold as fish food
(I studied them in biology). You can buy them at the pet shop (at least, you can for
the time being) for 40 roubles a kilo. Papa bought 5 kg and now were trying them
NOTEBOOK No. 2
30 December 1941 Were on holiday from the 1st to the 5th. Well be fed
at the school. But we have to study at home. Theres a New Year party at the
Mikhailovsky Theatre, with a three-course meal. Thats how things are these days,
its all about food. I often despise myself for being weak and pathetic, but I cant
help it. Ill pinch a bit of food, or nibble off a bit, and then feel ashamed for taking
food that belongs to Mama and Papa. Its so horrible to be hungry! I felt so bad this
morning, I needed to eat so badly. At the moment, Im still all right. Ill try to hold
out till this evening, not to take anything. New Year looks like being rather dull. It
all depends on whether we manage to get something good to eat or not
13 January 1942. New Year has come and gone. We had a bit of a celebration,
but fell asleep around midnight. At first I wanted to celebrate the actual moment
when the New Year came in, and I began to fuss and cry, but then I calmed down.
I hope I sleep as soundly for the rest of the year.
The situation in the city is now difficult beyond belief. We all had such high
hopes of the New Year, and of January. But there has been no improvement. The
ration is still only 200 g and they only started today to give out rations for the first
ten-day period. People are dying like flies. Tens of thousands of people are starving
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to death every day in the city. There is no hope on the horizon. No encouraging
news from the front. And the blockade still hasnt been broken.
Life at home is rather strange at the moment. We have all sorts of hardships to deal
with: were hungry, theres not much firewood left, its cold, theres no electricity,
we have to get water from the laundry, and take the slops out into the yard, the trams
arent running and Papa and Mama walk to work. And what sort of work is possible
now anyway?
Papas off sick at the moment. Mamas at home today as well which makes
things easier. Just a few days ago, Papa said, I think Im probably going to die of
hunger
Theyve extended the school holidays till the 15th. We dont get a meal every
day. On the 7th, there was a New Year party. They had the bright idea of putting
on Turgenevs A Nest of Gentlefolk. They made us sit there freezing from 11 till 5,
and then they gave us each a small bowl of soup, some wheat porridge with a rissole
and then a little jelly. I dont give a damn about school work at the moment. Im not
working at all. Whats the point?
At home Im getting on well with Mama and Papa. Hunger brings people much
closer together. Were all trying to make things feel homely in some way. Mama is
dreaming of going away, once the war is over, to live in some small town, further
south, so that we can live independently of life in a big city, and we all agree with her.
Im beginning to understand a lot for the first time. I have come to know Papa and
Mama better, to see their good and bad points. And Ive got to know myself better too.
If we can only get through this! When will it all end? At the moment, there doesnt
seem to be anything that offers any hope or consolation
28 February 1942. Today was my fifteenth birthday. What a different birthday from
the one I was expecting, the one I had dreamed about! I dont have the energy or the
strength to write very much, so Ill be brief. Anyway, even if I dont write it all down, I
will never, as long as I live, forget what has happened.
Papa died on the 18th. It all happened so quickly. Mama was ill, and Papa was
living at the Post Office. He had been in hospital, but he had got a little better. Then
he suddenly came down with diarrhoea, stopped eating, grew weaker and about one
oclock on the 18th, he died there, at the Post Office. I spent the night with him two
nights before he died, and Mama was with him for his last night. We did everything we
could, but it was too late. The doctor said that there had been no hope for Papa from
December to January onwards, as nothing can be done once somebody has reached
the third stage of malnutrition.
I never thought Id be left fatherless at fourteen. I cant even take in how dreadful
it all is. Its so awful to see someone die of malnutrition, especially just at a time when
food was starting to appear again. Dear, sweet Papa how he wanted to live! He hadnt
 78

prepared for his own death, he never thought of it. He had never even taught us how to
live or what to do.
We buried him on the 22nd. We had to bury him without a coffin: Mama and I both
felt so poorly, and we had no help at all. Dear, sweet Papa, forgive us for sewing you up
in a blanket and burying you like that. His grave is in a good place, a bright meadow,
with a birch copse nearby, in the Okhtinskoe (Georgievskoe) Cemetery.
Now all I have left that is dear to me is my Mama. And, I suppose, my diary of two
years
28 April 1942. I havent written anything for two months. Weve had to cope with
some trials during this time. In March, we had our ration cards stolen. After all Mamas
extras, we were left with nothing. I was distraught, afraid that it would be the end for
Mama, and it would all be my fault. It terrified me to think of trying to live for a month
in this starving city without ration cards. But perhaps it was all for the best. Now that
its all in the past I can write about it calmly. Everything turned out all right. We began
to sell and exchange our belongings: our furniture, gramophones, Papas watch and
other things. As a result, weve managed to live quite decently all this time, that is to
say, weve had more than the official norm. So things have turned out for the best. We
wrote to Vytegra, and recently we got a telegram back. Theyre expecting us there. As
soon as they begin evacuating people by barge, Mama and I will leave for Vytegra. All
our thoughts are set on this journey. There are a lot of things to be done and all sorts of
challenges ahead, but I think well manage, one way or another. Three pages are not
enough for me to write everything that has happened over the last two months. Mama
and I have become closer than ever. When we had to make do without ration cards,
we began to get a better idea of other people, and to discover how generous and warm-
hearted M. I. and M. O. Geyn are, who put aside some of their own meagre ration for
us. On the other hand, our actual relative, Uncle Borya, turned out to be absolutely
heartless and uncaring. Some sad things have been happening recently: Aunt Sofa
has died, and Erik and M. O. Geyn are at deaths door. And something else that was
particularly hard for us to bear: we were unable to find Papas grave at the cemetery
But all in all, things have become a little easier. Spring is in the air. The city is
coming back to life, the trams are running again, and everything is open for business:
cinemas, shops and hairdressers. Its true! I went to get a haircut and got rid of my plaits.
Im very pleased with it
1 May 1942. What a day this has turned out to be! A celebration worthy of the
name1. Its almost as if we are being helped by somebody or something. Perhaps its
Providence, or perhaps its Papa, or Granny Zhenyas prayers Yesterday I swapped
some childrens dresses for grain and bread at the market a very good exchange.
Mama managed to get a jar of blood meal for 400 g of bread and swapped two wine
1
The First of May, International Workers Day, was a big festival in the Soviet Union.
 79

glasses and a decanter for 300 g, and arranged for a woman to come and pick up another
four wine glasses from us tomorrow.
We had a special celebratory breakfast: we fried up two panfuls of blood meal and
flour, and had two cups of tea and 5 dextrine glue pancakes each. Oh, and I forgot
the most important thing we had a little glass of port each. Its difficult to imagine
how you could have a better breakfast these days. Then we decided to have a wash.
I brought in a bucket of water and Mama heated it up. No sooner had I started to
undress, than Tatyana Petrovna arrived. She is the doctor who bought our paraffin
stove, nursery chairs and a childs play-house. Thats when it happened! I dont know
why she took such a liking to us, but she and Mama had a chat and Tatyana Petrovna
agreed to register both of us at her canteen for a course of intensive nutritional
therapy. I just cant believe it. To get a referral you would normally have to queue up
for about six hours, and even then you they wouldnt necessarily take you. And they
certainly wouldnt take me, because of my age. But Tatyana Petrovna has sorted it
all out. So now Im 19, Im a student, the institute where I study has been evacuated,
and now I am about to start at the Building and Engineering Technical College, but
my application is still being processed. Our new address is apartment 20, 16 Pestel
Street.
So yesterday we were worrying about how we would survive on our dependants
ration cards, and now we can be sure that for fifteen days (317 May inclusive) well
be having a cooked breakfasts, dinner and supper and 500 g of bread every day!!!
Now I dont think it will be a problem for us to get to Vytegra. Well build up our
strength at the canteen and Mama can get some vitamins for her legs. On our way
back, we called in at the savings bank. Mama took out everything in her savings book. I
checked our savings bonds. There were lots of tables and I didnt manage to check them
all. But still, it turned out that I had won 150 roubles out of the blue (enough to pay for
half the vitamins
Mama is now a firm believer in God. She thinks somebodys praying for us, maybe
Papa, maybe Aunt Sofa, and definitely Granny Zhenya and Aunt Lyuba Who knows?
I dont understand these things. Im not a believer, and yet after everything that has
happened, I feel as if I believe in Providence.
Its getting dark. Ill stop writing now. As the perfect end to a marvellous day,
Mama has brought back a woman who wants to buy some of our belongings for almost
600 roubles
12 May 1942. Yesterday I didnt have time to write up my diary. Mama came
back from the market and so we went out to have dinner. Yesterday was another very
successful day, for a Monday. I sold our Jack London books for 80 roubles, and the
Grigorevs brought us some blood and some cream curds, and gave us bread and money
in exchange for Papas coat.
 80

Mama bought herself some shoes at the market (we swapped her designer shoes for
butter) and some material for a skirt for me Now that weve started to eat better, my
head has become clearer and my mind is sharper. I often find myself thinking about
my life, and about how Ill have to forget all about my father, now, my dear Papa. Now
hell never work with us or spend time with us ever again. All through the winter, I was
in a state of paralysis, but now I can feel it all quite clearly, and it sends shivers down
my spine.
Ive had the idea of writing a story, or rather, an account, or a tale of life in Leningrad
during the siege this last winter. Ill start it on the journey out and finish it in Vytegra. I
may not be as good at writing as Kara or Mayka, but if I try, I think Ill be able manage
to write what I want to. The heroine will be called Katya or something it doesnt
actually matter. She will be about my age and will have a lot of the same qualities as
me, plus some qualities that I wish I had. Katya will experience all the hardship and the
privations of the winter weve just lived through; to start with, shell work in the anti-gas
squad and get involved in volunteer work. Then shell start to starve, and then shell lose
her parents. In other words, shell be a version of myself
I think my story will be able to give a good idea of the harsh winter, the terrible
things the people of Leningrad have been through, and peoples personal suffering. To
make it more natural, Ill draw on my own experience, on what Ive seen and heard
 82

Tanya Vassoevich began her diary on 22 June 1941, the day war broke out. She lived at
No. 39, Sixth Line, on Vasilevsky Island. Her father Nikolay Bronislavovich was far away
from home when the war began, on a geological expedition. Tanya had stayed behind in the
city with her mother, Ksenia Platonovna, and her 15-year-old brother Volodya.
Volodya died in January 1942. Tanya organised her brothers burial herself, because
her mother was already too weak. Tanyas mother died a month later. Her body lay in the
apartment for nine days before Tanya, who was only thirteen, was able to make arrangements
for this second burial. In her diary, Tanya drew a plan of the cemetery, making a note of
where her relatives were buried, in the hope that if she survived the siege she would, some
day, erect memorial stones to them. And this is what she did, eventually. Everything Tanya
wrote in her diary about the deaths of her brother and mother, and about their burial, was
written in a code of Tanyas own invention. All this information was sacred and deeply
personal to her.
More than forty years later, in 1986, Tatyana Nikolaevna Vassoevich made a note in
her diary in which she admitted that, for more than ten years after the siege, she would still
dream of making efforts to bury her family members. Still more often, I would have dreams
in which I was saving my mother, or had to save my mother from death. Tanya would also
often recall how their music teacher, Maria Mikhaylovna, had come to visit the family
three days before the death of Tanyas brother, and told them that her husband had died of
hunger. Volodya had exclaimed, Why didnt you tell us he was dying of hunger? Id have
given him my bread! That was on 20 January. On the 23rd, Volodya died of hunger. The
young boy had shown remarkable spiritual strength.
Tanya Vassoevich graduated from art college and from the architecture faculty of the
Leningrad Engineering and Building Institute. For many years she taught fine arts to young
people. She had a long life and passed away in 2012.
Tanyas son, Andrey Vassoevich, a professor at St Petersburg State University,
comments: In the 1990s it became fashionable to talk of how people lost all resemblance to
human beings during the siege, and of how cannibalism became commonplace in Leningrad,
My mother was outraged at this. By contrast, she would often recall the generous acts of
kindness of which siege-dwellers were capable. Her diary strikes a chord with the writings of
the poet Olga Bergholz who also lived through the siege: A terrible joy, has been shown to us
/ And its praises will only be sung / When we share the last pinch of tobacco, / And divide
up the very last crumb.1 The reason the city survived was that people thought of others, not
of themselves.

1
OlgaBergholzorBerggolts(19101975),aprominentSovietwriterandpoet.SheremainedinLeningradthroughout
theentiresiegeandhelpedmaintainthemoraleoftheinhabitantsofthecitywithherradiobroadcasts.Thequoteisfrom
thepoemFebruaryDiarywrittenin1942.
 83

22 June 1941. At 12 oclock today there was an announcement: we are at war.

Comrade Molotov made a speech. Mother was crying. I was smiling
On the 22nd we spent all day running about making arrangements, Volodya, Mama
and I ran round the shops and went to the savings bank and to see Lyusya
23 June. In the afternoon I went to the art school to see Pyotr Pavlovich Kazakov.
I didnt take any drawings with me, just went to exchange news, to talk about this and
that.
P.P. was in a new classroom. I stood hesitating at the door for a minute and went
in. P. P. greeted me and said, Have you brought me some of your work, or have you
just come for a chat? I said I had just come for a chat. Well, Im just getting my work
together, he told me. I think I might have to go to the front.
We talked a little about the war, and about what areas the Germans had managed
to capture, and how many planes they had shot down. P.P. gathered up some work and
took his easel and we left the school. It was windy outside, but warm. We walked along
in silence. I wanted to ask him what sort of airman he was, but I didnt pluck up the
courage to ask. We walked together as far as the corner of Sredny Prospekt. P.P. shook
me by the hand, said goodbye and left, and I set off home
28 June I heard that the schools were going to be evacuated. We all think its
madness. Im absolutely opposed to the idea of leaving. I went to see Iras mother (Ira
herself is at Pioneer camp). Iras mother has been out to Siverskaya. She says Ira might
be evacuated straight from camp, without coming back to Leningrad.
This really alarmed me. If I have to leave, I want to leave with Ira
For the first few days in Valday1 we were very homesick and very worried about
the people wed left behind in Leningrad. Sometimes wed imagine that Leningrad was
being bombed. If anybody arrived from Leningrad, wed start thinking the city had
already fallen to the Germans, and that we were being kept in the dark about it. It was
like this all the time
17 July At 10 oclock we arrived back in Leningrad!!! Mama was at the station
with Aunt Natasha, we took a taxi home We drove past the hallowed building of the
Academy of Arts but there were no artists sitting at the open windows, only soldiers
While we were in Valday we were cut off from the world and heard no news from
the front or from Leningrad. It was only when I got back that I found out that rationing
had been introduced in the city on 18 July. Naturally, we did all we had to. We spent
all day running around the shops, even though I wasnt feeling well after the journey
23 July. The housing manager came to us and said, Get your things together
quickly, in one hour you are going to take part in voluntary manual work in Krasnoe
Selo. Vova and I got our things ready and went out to the gate We drove out to

1
A town in the Novgorod Region. Tanya Vassoevich was sent out of the city to Valday for a short while with a number
of other children and later allowed to return.
 84

Gatchina. Everybody got out there and some soldiers showed us where to go. We
stopped at a little orchard, or rather a space under the trees at the side of the road. I had
just opened my rucksack and taken out a bottle of kefir, when we heard a quiet droning
noise and people began to shout that it was a raid. I started to get my things together,
not really hurrying, just as I do in Leningrad whenever theres an alert. Then suddenly
there was a roar of German planes overhead and a great booming noise close by. It was
the first time Id ever come under fire, and I was terrified. I stuffed everything back in
the rucksack and ran off after everyone else to the ditch at the side of the road. We all
threw ourselves face down into the ditch. I put my rucksack over my head. I still dont
know if it was bombs, or anti-aircraft guns. But there were lots of loud bangs, and it
seemed they were getting closer and closer, about to explode right on top of us. Then
the noise began to fade, and soon it was all quiet again. We all got up out of the ditch,
pale with fear and covered in dust There was another barrage of fire. We ran in the
direction of the park, and the sentries along the road showed us where to go, laughed
and told us, Dont worry, youll get used to it.
27 March. 23/1/42 at 6.28 Vova died.
1942. On 17/2 at 11.45 Mama died.
I have stuck these pages together so that nobody sees what is most precious to me.
Aunt Lyusya, Grandmother, Tolya Takvelin Vovas classmate and best friend and I
were present at the burial. Tolya cried. That affected me more than anything else.
I had arranged for Mr Khudyakov, who dug Vovas grave, to dig a grave next to it for
Ira Razumovskayas father, Alexander Nikolaevich, and he dug a recess into the right
hand side of the grave; we put Alexander Nikolaevichs coffin in there.
Aunt Lyusya and I buried Mama.
Vova and Mama were buried in real coffins, which I bought next to the second
bread queue on Sredny Prospekt. Mr Khudyakov dug the grave in exchange for bread
and grain. He is a good man and didnt take everything I had, but left me a share. He
didnt argue or complain and was kind to me. Mama hadnt come to Vovas burial. She
was too weak by then
A frosty day. Bright sunlight. Today I went to the childrens hospital on Third Line
to pick up the death certificate. I wore Vovas coat ... The head doctor found the card
for Vladimir Vassoevich in the card index, and wrote across it in big letters DEAD
Grandmother and Aunt Lyusya carry Vova out of the house. Lydia Ivanovna
Motkevich comes out and crosses herself. Lyusya pulls the coffin along, with
Grandmother and me walking alongside. Iras fathers coffin is being pulled along
next to us. Tolya Takvelin comes with us. Two light-blue coffins. People ask where
we managed to get such good ones made. It is the first time I have ever been at the
cemetery. A hole in the ground. Its all quite simple, as it turns out. Tolya is crying.
Theres someone who really loved Vova!
 85

Tanya in her family apartment in Leningrad. After the deaths of her mother and brother, when
she was left at home alone, Tanya witnessed a miracle. In the middle of the flat was a block
of ice a frozen fish tank, with fish suspended motionless in the ice. In spring, when the ice
melted, one of the goldfish came back to life and began to swim about.

Tanya Vassoevich was a

student at art school, and
the pages of her diary are
decorated with a great many
drawings. As an adult, she
would teach art to children for
many years.
Photo and page from diary
from the personal archive of A.
Vassoevich.
 86

31 March. At 12 oclock I rang the Geological Survey Research Institute. I asked

for Tatyana Aleksandrovna and asked her about evacuation. She told me that she had
got a telegram from Papa; he wrote that he will entrust the money to Aunt Lyusya. If
possible, hell ask for me to be sent to Sukhumi
9 May. At 6 oclock in the evening the train arrived in Rostov. We were amazed to
see porters wearing medallions and white aprons. Its the first time weve seen that in a
long time!!!
29 August. I woke up as it was getting light. The train had stopped in Kilyazi. I dont
know if it is the same place we travelled through when we went to Alty-Agach, but I
didnt recognise it. Sofia and I ran to have a look at the village, a group of huts on the
other side of a wasteland. We walked around them. I like these huts, or sakli1 made of
clay, some of them look as if they have two storeys, everything is spotlessly clean.
7 November. I found out that Seryozha has died. I loved him so much, and still do.
Its horrible. My brother Vova has died, and now my cousin, Seryozha. Theres no one
else
August 1944 Were going on a trip today. To a mine. It sounds interesting
From the mine entrance, tunnels lead off in different directions. We walk along
one of them. After a few metres the rails end and we come to a dead end. The air is
stuffy, and feels full of dust. Not long ago there was an explosion here. Pieces of stone
lie scattered about on all sides. We come back a little way and set off along another
tunnel. Here they are drilling. A carbide lamp hangs from the roof and a man is bent
over, working with a drill. The noise is deafening; it drowns out our voices. Then the
man stops and turns off the drill. Suddenly, it is quiet. The man is a Stakhanovite2, the
best cutter in the mine. He works so hard, he fulfils the quotas of two or three men.
He is covered in grey dust from head to foot. Only his mouth shows red. I think his job
must be the hardest work anyone has to do in a mine. Were on our way to the Altai
opencast mine. In the evening we stopped next to a building, and decided to spend the
night outside. Somebody said that they were showing the film Sailors, or something
like it. I didnt want to go at first, but changed my mind later, and ran to catch up
with the others. It was dark, an unfamiliar place. I could barely see a thing inside the
cinema. But people were staring at us a group of newcomers, all of us dirty and
wearing trousers
My birthday: 28 August 1944. So, in the morning I went to fetch the water, then
to the market. I called on Galya Borodavchenko, to ask them to come in the evening.
Marina and Ksana came by in the afternoon. Marina bought me a little cake and Ksana
brought a pumpkin. Lyusya gave me six pretty mother-of-pearl buttons.

1
Sakli a name for local dwelling huts in the Caucasus region.
2
In Soviet Russia, as part of the bid to increase manufacturing output, workers were encouraged to overfulfil production
quotas. The coal miner Aleksey Stakhanov became an object of emulation, giving his name to a general term for super-
productive workers.
 87

I went to register at the school. It wasnt very interesting. They just asked me for my
documents and then told me I was free to go. Marunka and Galya came in the evening.
They brought me a bunch of asters and three pencils! Then Nadya Borodavchenko
came. She brought me a bunch of asters and dahlias. I asked Marina to come over too.
I put flowers in everybodys hair. I had two red dahlias in my hair, so the girls called
me Carmen. We played opinions. When we were all giving our opinions on Marina,
somebody said little kitten and I added little tiger cub. Later when we were discussing
me, Marina described me as a girl not entirely free of malice we had tea, then told
riddles and then everyone went home. I cant say I didnt enjoy the evening, after all
we did everything we could. But there was nothing truly happy about it.
New Year 1945. On the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Ill be making my costume as quickly as I
can.
3 January. Today was the day Ive been waiting for. The day of the fancy-dress ball
at school.
First there was an amateur talent show. It wasnt very good, and it was very cold in
the Pioneers Hall. At last they let us go upstairs. The rooms had been nicely done up.
The first was like an oriental sitting room, with a sofa, carpets and a raised platform,
just like in a teahouse. In the second there were fir trees in the snow, blue lights and
light blue material on one wall, with a moon and stars. In the third room they had
refreshments. The dancing was all in the corridor.
There was a dance band booked for the party, a group of border guards from Orlov.
They sang and danced very well. I danced all evening, though not always very well. I
was dressed in my costume the Princess from Turandot. It was a good costume
so good that everybody thought it had come from a costumier (which must be why I
didnt get the prize). There were lots of costumes. The ones from the costumiers were
good, the home-made ones not so good. Somebody cut the pane out of the cloakroom
window, got in and stole three coats. There was a bit of fuss over that. We went home
just after midnight, but I could have kept on dancing!
9 May 1945. So here it is, the day millions of people have been waiting for for
almost four years1. Have I been waiting for this day too, I wonder? Well, yes I have; I
have repeated along with everyone else if only the war would hurry up and finish! But
theres always been something else, too. Perhaps Ive always been a little nervous of
this day; perhaps Ive always felt that it should be a serious occasion, in some way. That
something should have happened to me by this time.
I wanted it to be serious in some way. I had hoped to be working in a proper job
when this day came around. I didnt feel a sense of joyful exuberance, just a sort of
stern joy. I danced and sang, but most of all (I think) what I wanted to do was to say
something to everybody to help them to be brave, decent, conscientious and hard-
1
The Soviet Union concluded peace a day after VE day, on 9 May 1945. The day is celebrated as Victory Day in Russia.
 88

working. To make people understand that there are good times in life, times when you
feel truly light-hearted, but you can only experience them after having done something
very difficult and very honourable. Then, when you celebrate afterwards the joy and
happiness are genuine.
 90

The siege diary of Galya Zimnitskaya reveals a sensitive, mature sensibility, although
it tells of the experiences of teenager. Just before New Year 1942, the boy who had been
Galyas first love died of starvation. Two years later, in 1944, Galya saw in the New Year
with a young officer named Volodya, who went off to fight as soon as the celebrations were
over, and later sent Galya letters from the front. One of the last entries in Galyas diary
reads, Early in spring 1945, I stopped getting letters from Volodya. Amazingly enough,
the tragedy of the siege was not enough to dampen the ardour of Galyas open, loving heart.
A year after the war, Galya gave birth to a daughter. Until her death in 1996, she lived
a long and varied life surrounded by people she loved, enjoying theatre and travel, and
working as a leading designer in a Leningrad factory. To the end of her life, she would
continue to revisit her childhood, to remember what it had been like inside that terrible
circle of tragedy in which she grew up, and in which she experienced love for the first time.
Galyas original diary did not survive. Immediately after the war, the family moved out
of the apartment in which they had lived during the siege. There were many more moves
and at some point the notebook, with all its records, was lost. Galina Karlovna recreated
her diary from memory later, in peacetime. She reconstructed it day by day, making several
drafts, checking the key moments of her personal story against the dates of historic battles,
typing out the manuscript and reliving everything all over again. As Galinas daughter Inna
told us, with tears in her eyes, The diary was very important to my mother, just as it is to me,
now. Once she tried to get her diary published, but was told, No thank you, we dont need
a book like this. There are far too many memories of that time, why go raking them up?
Im very touched that her diary is finally considered important, and that it will be read by
others, not just by her grandson. All memories are precious, after all.
 91

1941, 22 June. Were at War! When the terrible announcement came over the radio,
Granny Sasheta and I were alone in the apartment. Mama and my stepfather, Uncle
Misha, had gone to the beach to see their friends. I was hunting about desperately
for my swimming cap and wasnt even paying attention to what was being said. My
friends were waiting impatiently out in the yard for us, making a terrible racket. My
grandmother grabbed me by the arm: Galya, she said, her lips trembling, Were
at war. Then I began to listen. I heard Hitler Germany has invaded without
warning in bad faith.1 Then I went to the window and shouted, Hey, everybody!
Were at war! We didnt go swimming today
28 June. The housing cooperative building has made a room into a medical centre
(in the building near Lanskaya Station where the Lenin Museum is). The only supplies
they have there at the moment are bandages, cotton wool and iodine. Theres been
a duty rota set up there, too; we girls are included on it. A doctor called Yekaterina
Aleksandrovna, the mother of my friend Nadya Rybakova, is running a first-aid group.
Shes teaching us first aid. Were practising bandaging on one another. The lessons
are great fun, and something happened today that made us laugh. We were practising
putting a bandage on Ira Malinovskayas head, (we had already splinted and bandaged
her leg) when her mother, Aunt Lyolya, came in; she rushed over to Ira, horrified,
thinking that she had been seriously hurt.
I cant believe people will actually be wounded. Whenever there has been an air
raid, everything has been calm.
My group of friends has been bitten by a bug were all learning to dance. Now
we meet up in each others houses, whenever we know therell be no parents around.
We have four records: Burnt by the Sun2, Rio Rita, Champagne Splashes3 and
La Cucaracha. But we dont often get to dance as its hard to find a good place to
do it. Yesterday I persuaded Granny to let us use our place. I promised to wash the
floor afterwards. There were seven of us. I danced mainly with Lyosha Zhukovsky.
Genya Prokopyuk only asked me once. Ever since Vera Gladkova came moved into
our block, the boys only have eyes for her
10 July. All our older comrades are disappearing one by one. Seryozha (Lyusya Kuryaks
brother), Roma Podskochy, Kolya Zhukovsky (Lyoshas brother), Tonya Osipova and
Lyusya Luneva have all volunteered to go to the front. Now nobody plays volleyball out
in the yard any more, or hangs about outside the front door (something people always
used to complain about). The only ones left are the ones like us, between twelve and
sixteen. But we dont feel like playing any more either. Our young spirits are burdened by
new troubles and anxieties; it no longer seems possible to lead a carefree life

1
A reference to the fact that Nazi Germany had broken the NaziSoviet non-aggression pact.
2
A Russian tango based on a popular Polish tune. Its title literally means Wearied by the Sun but it is known
internationally in this translation, which was used as the title of a 1994 film by Nikita Mikhalkov.
3
A Russian tango from 1937.
 92

20 July. Theres a lot of talk about the situation at the front. Its not encouraging.
That policeman, Uncle Sasha, came up to us today and told us it was time we all
went home. He said the enemy is sending spies into the city, trying to create panic by
spreading false rumours that the Fascists are gaining ground outside Leningrad. Were
to be on our guard, and alert him, or the police, if we notice anything suspicious.
Fat barrage balloons have crept across the sky, dark shapes against the fading light
of the sunset.
The war has been going on for a month now. But it feels as if its been going on for
a whole year. There are rumours that people sent to dig defence trenches have been
killed in artillery attacks. We havent heard anything from our friends. Granny keeps
sighing to herself, and I try to cheer her up, telling her that the rumours are being
spread by spies.
30 July. Today Mama and Uncle Misha came back from their work very upset
(they work at the Progress factory). It was announced today that the factory is
about to be evacuated. We all have to leave. My heart sank when I heard this. Leave
Leningrad? Leave my friends, and everything else behind? What was the point of the
first aid classes? Why did Uncle Misha get me a childs gas mask? Suddenly, Granny
declared that she was staying put and had no intention of leaving the city. I said that
I would stay with her. When Mama protested, I went into hysterics. Its a long time
since Ive cried like that. Mama and Uncle Misha were taken aback and went into the
other room to discuss it. I wonder what will happen. But my mind is made up. Im
not going.
2 August. Granny and I have won over Mama and Uncle Misha. Theyre going
to stay in the city with us. As it turns out, some sections of the factory are being kept
open, to make military supplies for the front. Mama works at the bench where they
make revolvers, so shes still needed. My stepfathers job is to tune the machines, so
they need him too. Everything has been sorted out and my parents are much happier
now. They admitted to us that they hadnt wanted to leave the city either.
15 August. It gets harder to write this diary every day. Perhaps Ill just give up
writing it? The days are passing uneventfully, and each day is just like the last. Our
duty shifts at the medical centre are going ahead as usual, but were not having lessons
any more, because Yekaterina Aleksandrovna has left. Deep down, I think were all
hoping for at least a little experience of battle conditions (a bombardment) so that we
can practise our skills on the wounded. Its stupid, but there it is.
Yesterday two families we knew left Leningrad, we had to say goodbye to Gay
Shevelenko and Volodya Pashko. Gay is very well read and has always shared anything
interesting he finds with us, and told us what books to read. His dream, or should I say
ambition, has always been to become a tank commander. As for Volodya, he would
always direct all our games. He made every game into a theatrical performance. And
 93

My mind is made up. Im not going, wrote Galya in her diary. As if swayed by the decision of a young child,
the family stayed in the besieged city. Not all of them would survive.
Photo from the archive of I. Chernomorskaya.
 94

he would perform the most amazing tricks on the carousel swing1. Its true, from time
to time, something would come over him, and then he would pester me, pulling my
pigtails or hitting my legs hard with a ball, until I would cry out, tearfully, Volodya,
stop it, it hurts! I remember Ira said to me once that it was Volodyas way of showing
he liked me. Hes in love with you, she said. Its just that you dont notice it. Of
course I didnt notice, I was too busy stealing glances at Genya. Ive liked Genya ever
since I was little. Granny could tell. Shed always say, Go on outside to the yard, that
little fair-haired boy Genya has been out there for ages.
21 August. Today was my birthday. I turned fourteen.
Today the speech made by Zhdanov2 and Voroshilov to the people of Leningrad
is in all the papers, and everybody is talking about it. The speech warns of coming
danger. That must mean that things at the front are even worse than before. Everyone
looks pained and anxious, but its still quite calm in the city; nobody is panicking. The
shops, cinemas and theatres are open. In the centre of town, some of the windows of
the big shops are boarded up and piled with sandbags. The spire of the Peter and Paul
Cathedral is covered with a grey hood, and there are camouflage nets spread over
some of the buildings. Some of the big buildings have been painted with greenish-
yellow patches. Channels and trenches have been dug in parks, squares and lawns.
Were worn out by all the air-raid warnings, but there hasnt been any bombing yet.
13 September. On 9 September, the Germans bombed the Badaev warehouses,
which contained large supplies of food. They also bombed the fairground rollercoaster,
where stores of flour and grain were being kept. Things are very bad now as far as food
is concerned. Food is scarce and monotonous, and were getting hungrier every day.
These days, Mama goes into work with a soup can. They serve soup in the factory
canteen, but my parents dont eat it, they bring it home. Granny Sasheta says the lack
of food isnt affecting her yet. Its affecting me, though. I feel it terribly!
22 September. Today, Yevgenia Trofimovna came to see us, an old lady from an
aristocratic family, who has had a very unhappy life. Before the Revolution, she and
her family lived in the town of Stary Oskol. They all dreamed of coming to Petrograd,
but it never happened. Then, at long last, just before the Revolution, their dream
came true: Yevgenia Trofimovnas husband was transferred to the city. They moved
here shortly after, but her husband was killed in a train crash. Then their only daughter
died of consumption. So she was left all alone. In all the years she has lived in the city,
she has never made any good friends. And now it seems that we are the people closest
to her. Before the war, she would make me dresses and alter Mamas old coats. And
now, at the age of seventy-six, she has asked to come and live with our family.

1
A playground ride consisting of several ropes joined to a rotating ring round a central pillar, which allows children to
swing round in circles, called Giant Steps in Russia.
2
Andrey Zhdanov (1896-1948), Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, later director of Soviet cultural policy.
 95

We talked about it over dinner, and came to the conclusion that we ought to do
what we could to make her old age a little less lonely. Uncle Misha went down to
Yevgenia Trofimovna on the first floor and brought up her case, a big basket and a few
other little things. Ye. T. herself brought up her documents and treasured letters in an
antique wooden box. I gave up my divan for her and now Im sleeping on the camp
bed. Granny gave me a wonderful eiderdown. If I make the effort to fluff it up before
I go to sleep, its like sleeping in a cloud
7 October Outside Uncle Mishas house, his daughter Zoya called out to me.
She looked upset and there were tears in her eyes. A few days ago their beloved cat
Kuzka went missing. Today they discovered his bright ginger head lying behind a pile
of firewood. Ive come across cats heads in the street now and again, but Ive only
just now realised that people have started to eat cats. You dont see any dogs around,
either.
10 October A few days ago Mama and I went to the Vyborg department store
to see what they had for sale. We found some black satin bathing suits with light-
blue trim and pretty elastic along the sides. We bought one each. The saleswoman
stared at us as if we were out of our minds, or as if we had access to some top-secret
information about the imminent end of the war. We didnt have anything of the sort.
We just hope well live to see peace.
But our troops are retreating again. Theyve had to abandon Oryol.
15 October Uncle Misha keeps joking with Mama, calling her his little chick
and his sweet pea. Mama is small. She was quite plump before the war but now shes
much thinner and has quite lost her looks. But my stepfather doesnt seem to notice,
he keeps calling her little chick and sweet pea. Yevgenia Trofimovna barely gets up
from the divan. Weve moved the table closer especially for her. Shell sit up, eat and
drink something and then lie back down again. She says shes not bothered by hunger.
She doesnt eat much: just drinks tea and nibbles sugar. She has her own supply of tea
and sugar. Her face is still round and rosy. She has probably changed the least out of
all of us. Granny is slowly and gradually losing weight, but she has a long way to go
before she is malnourished, as she was the size of three women before. The shortage
of food isnt affecting her as it is the rest of us. Shes still able to divide food up, in
order to make it last two or three days, rather than eating it all at once. So now shes
the one in charge where this is concerned
21 October. Yesterday, a lone artilleryman was caught in Forestry Technical
Academy Park. Some of our boys helped the police. I dont know what they were
doing at the park. Since a recent raid, in which dozens were killed, we havent been
going there any more; we were afraid of seeing visions of the dead in every trench.
But anyway, Genya, Dima and Alyoshka were running about in the park and noticed
some burnt matches and cigarette ends next to one of the trenches. They thought it
 96

looked suspicious, so they told our policeman. The police surrounded the enemy
soldier and caught him in the act, about to let off another rocket his last one, as it
turned out
26 October. Vera and I went to two army hospitals today, but they wouldnt take
us on because of our age. Then we went to a third hospital, a big one which has been
set up in the Forestry Technical Academy. This time we were in luck. They agreed to
take us on as scribes, as many of the wounded are unable to write letters themselves.
Tomorrow Vera and I are to go along. Im very nervous. Its important to be strong;
not to let people see that we feel sorry for them, or show our anxiety.
28 October. Everything went very well at the hospital today. Vera and I were taken
into a tent full of soldiers with bandages on their arms and legs. Some had bandages
over their eyes, too. But the atmosphere wasnt gloomy in the slightest; everything
was fine. I stopped worrying immediately. The wounded soldiers were very friendly;
they asked us where we went to school, and wanted to hear all sorts of things about
life in the city. We got the hang of it quickly and began writing out letters dictated to
us by the soldiers. I wrote four letters this evening. Im trying hard not to make any
mistakes.
30 October Sometimes we are given some simple tasks to do at the hospital:
rolling bandages or making swabs. Once we washed the dishes. The adults keep trying
to feed us, but weve refused to take any food from the start, and were not backing
down. The nurse is always trying to make us eat. She tells us that the bread is left over
from the rations of seriously ill and dead people. But we havent given in, even though
we desperately want to eat. We are afraid theyll think we are going just for the food.
2 November. The charge nurse got tired of arguing with us over food and
complained to her supervisors. The head doctor said, simply: If they wont eat, they
wont be allowed into the hospital. Now everything is much easier. We dont to have
torture ourselves any more by refusing porridge and bread.
6 November. Today I found out that our policeman, Uncle Sasha, had gone off
to the front. And a few days ago, he borrowed my electric torch (a souvenir from my
father).
I was so sorry to lose the torch that I almost cried. Under the pear tree in the yard,
I was complaining: What a cheek, not to give back what you borrowed! Genya was
indignant. What are you talking about? he said. Your torch might save Sashas life
how can you be so stingy! I bit my tongue. Genya is right, as usual.
I forgot to say that weve had some letters from the front, thanking us for our
parcels. The first letter that came was for Aunt Nastya in apartment No. 19. It was
a letter from a soldier. He wrote that he had no family or close friends, and that he
would like to find a girl to write to. Aunt Nastya gave the letter to Lyolya Ferkovich.
Now Lyolya reads us letters from the front from this soldier, Senya. In his letters, he
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describes what its like in battle, he talks of the suffering of the people in the occupied
territory, about hungry ragged children trying make their way across the firing line to
the Russian troops, hoping to get a crust of bread
10 November. Today they reduced the bread ration again. There was an awkward
conversation over tea this evening as a result of this news. Mama announced that
from tomorrow, Uncle Misha would be eating his own bread ration all by himself,
and that she would share her bread ration with me and Granny. Uncle Misha blinked
feebly at her (hes generally slow to react) and then blurted out:
No. I wont do it.
But Mama was firm: You will. Youll eat all your ration yourself.
I cant eat all my bread ration myself, Zina.
Nows not the time to play at being chivalrous. Youre a man. You need ten times
the amount theyre giving out now.
But Galyas a growing girl! he objected.
Galya gets extra at the hospital, said my mother.
At that moment, the siren went off and Mama hurried out to the stairs, and my
stepfather got up too.
17 November. Today Mama kept me off school, because it was women only day
in the round bathhouse, which doesnt happen that often. We had a good wash,
and had just come back into our flat when the whole building began to shake. The
anti-aircraft fire and the air-raid warning began at the same time, and then the bombs
came down, one after another. It was all over in about five minutes.
When the all-clear sounded, I rushed over to the school. There were ambulances
there already. Wounded children were being put into ambulances on stretchers, and
wounded teachers as well. The children had been crossing Serdobolskaya Street to get
to the trench shelters when the bombs fell. One boy was killed because he hesitated,
and stayed standing up after everyone else had got down. Our Pavel Petrovich was also
badly wounded. He was standing in the road, too, shepherding the children across to the
shelter. Such awful luck! There were a lot of people hurt at Lanskaya Station. They took
all the bodies off behind a fence and two duty wardens with red armbands stood waiting
for the ambulance. Blood was running out from under the fence onto the pavement
2nd December. All the glass in the hospital windows has been blown out. The
wards are dark, now, as all the windows are boarded up with plywood. Most of the
wounded are in the air-raid shelter, particularly the really bad cases. Were trying to
get rid of the traces of the raid as quickly as we can, putting in new window panes, and
plastering the walls and ceilings (there are big pieces of plaster coming off in places).
Nurse Tanya told us they had had quite a time of it that night. Some paraffin
lamps were knocked over and broken by the blast, and so two fires started up, which
people didnt notice at first in all the confusion. But they still managed to put out
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the fires before the firemen arrived. One wounded soldier told me its worse here
than at the front. At the front, you know where the enemy is, and you know from
which direction you can expect an attack, or artillery fire; whereas here you feel like
a cornered animal. I helped till late at night, cleaning rubbish from the wards, taking
out broken glass, plaster and scraps of plywood.
3 December. There was quite a drama at our house today. The woman from No.
3, the cobblers wife (we dont even know her name) came to our door. She started
to beg Mama to save her children from starvation (Granny was at work). For some
reason, this woman had decided that we had some supplies of food. She pleaded with
Mama to give her some grain, at the very least, if that was all she could do.
My little Rosa is dying, please help us, the woman begged, holding out a cup. At
first, Mama was at a loss. She just stood there and said nothing. The woman took this
silence for a sign that Mama didnt want to share her grain, and went on begging, now
on her knees. Then Mama seemed to wake up out of her daze. She opened the doors
of our old sideboard and all our kitchen cupboards.
Have a look, she said. You can take anything you find.
All the shelves were completely empty and clean.
Please, get up off your knees. said Mama.
But the woman couldnt get up. Mama and I took her under the arms, lifted her,
and sat her down on a stool.
Cant you see that my husband can barely walk? Why should you think we have
any food? Mama said, in a tone of mild reproach.
Aleksandra Viktorovna1 has always been such a good housekeeper, I thought
the woman didnt finish. Finally persuaded that we had no food at all, she covered her
face with her hands and began to cry.
On the subject of our supplies: all we ever had was a pillowcase full of rusks;
Granny made them by drying out all sorts of crusts and other uneaten pieces of white
bread and black bread over the stove, not for economys sake, but because she thinks
it is a sin to throw away bread. But we finished all these rusks ages ago.
4 December. Hunger is eating away at us, day and night. Uncle Misha can barely
move, his legs are so weak. Mama has changed so much shes unrecognisable. Granny
is now thin and stooped, but more active than she used to be. The skin on her face
and body is hanging in folds. She works as a laundrywoman at the hostel attached
to the Kalinin tram depot, washing bed linen and drying wet clothes and shoes.
Basically, she can be gone for days on end. As the trams arent running any more the
tram drivers and conductors are busy doing other jobs, clearing snow from the roads,
chopping firewood etc. Now Granny has a workers card. But unfortunately, there
isnt anything in the shops except rationed bread.
1
i.e., Galyas grandmother, Granny Sasheta (Sasha or Sasheta is short for Aleksandra).
 99

Ive seen lots of people dragging along coffins, or bodies sewn up in sheets, on
their way to the Shuvalov Cemetery.
Ive developed a patch of broken skin under my arm. Mama says its due to poor
metabolism. Uncle Misha joked that it was due to the complete lack of anything to
metabolise.
6 December. Mama has got together all the things we can swap for food on the
black market. The first things she took were Uncle Mishas Astrakhan hat and his
knee-length coat. Gracious Heavens! cried Granny, What dyou think hes going to
go about in now? The important thing is that hes still able to go about, said Mama.
It doesnt matter so much what he wears. She brought back a tiny bag of millet from
the market and a loaf of completely stale bread. Gracious Heavens! cried Granny
again when she saw it. Thats stolen bread. You could get shot for that these days,
theyd take you in as an accomplice. Surely you must realise that, Zina!
I know, said Mama. But I cant bear to see you all getting closer and closer
to death. The bread might not even be stolen. It might have been a bread factory
workers ration. Do you see how stale it is?
Poor, dear, honest Granny Sasheta how does she imagine were going to
survive?
7 December. I ran into Lyusya Kuryak at the bakers. She said that her father
had been taken off his job at the factory to work on a burial squad. There are some
apartments in the city where there are dead bodies that still havent been taken away.
Especially in the centre of town. People there have been dying not only from hunger
but from cold, too, as there is no firewood. Before the war, they heated their houses
with steam heating. Later, they had to burn their furniture and books, but that wasnt
enough to keep them warm through the bitter siege winter.
11 December. This afternoon, in the bakers, I saw something terrible. A boy of
about ten years old snatched an old womans bread ration out of her hands and began
eating it on the spot. All the women in the shop rushed to grab it away from him, but
he lay on the ground face down, and finished eating the bread lying there on the dirty
floor, while the blows rained down on him. What was most awful about it was that
nobody stepped forward to try to defend the boy. He lay there for a while and then got
up, wiped the tears and blood from his face and walked out, dirty and ragged, maybe
completely alone. Now, my heart aches with pity for that boy. But what did I do while
he was being beaten? I just stood and watched, without a word
13 December. Theres been a great victory for our troops outside Moscow! As a
celebration, Mama decided we would have a bath day. We brought water from the
pond, stoked up the stove and heated up a huge vat of water. We washed in the tub.
After our bath, we all looked rosier and healthier. We laughed and joked over our
meagre dinner. Uncle Misha was in a particularly cheerful mood. He was proud of
 10 0

the victory outside Moscow. It was a real step forward. We were as excited as children.
Yevgenia Trofimovna crossed herself. She was praying for us, as usual. As for herself,
all she is wishing for is a quick death. She doesnt want to be a burden on us
24 December. Ira Malinovskayas mother has died. Yesterday Ira came running
to see me. Aunt Lyolya was lying on the divan fully dressed; her breath was coming
quick and shallow. She gave me a weak smile and then put a hand on her chest.
Mother worked two shifts today, said Ira. Soon Aunt Lyolya was even worse; she
couldnt even open her eyes. I suggested that maybe she had fainted from hunger.
Ira shrugged. Theres nothing to eat in the house, she said. Then, all of a sudden,
she remembered something and ran to the kitchen. She came back holding a bottle.
There was a little bit of fortified wine at the bottom of the bottle. Aunt Lyola opened
her eyes and stared at Ira. Ira poured out a spoonful of wine into her mouth. Aunt
Lyolas pulse flared up for a moment. When it died down again, Ira gave her mother
some more wine. She would come back to life for a minute, and her heart would start
to beat faster. Ira carried on like this until there was no wine left.
Aunt Lyolya died without saying another word. She was so sweet and beautiful
and only thirty-five years old. Ira is all on her own.
26 December. Today, on the way home, we saw a young woman lying dead in
the snow. She was lying in the middle of the road on Lesnoy Prospekt; it looked
as if she had fallen from a sledge loaded with bodies when it went over a rut. The
woman was so beautiful that at first we thought she was a mannequin from a looted
shop window. She was wearing a dark dress of thin material, with a low neckline.
Her beautiful, olive-skinned hands were crossed on her breast, like a singers. Her
marvellous dark hair streamed out over the dirty snow. We were amazed at how
pretty her face was: not at all gaunt, with high cheekbones and wonderful eyelashes.
Mama and I stood and looked at the poor, beautiful dead girl, feeling so sorry for
her, and meanwhile, people walked by without stopping or showing any surprise,
either at the beauty of the girl, or at the fact that she was lying in the middle of
the road. Still, it was only to be expected, I suppose. Theres a bitter frost at the
moment and people wrap themselves up in several scarves when they go outside.
They walk along hunched over, looking down at their feet, so as not to fall. Not
everybody has the strength to get up again after a fall. People arent interested in
looking around them
29 December. I met Genyas mother, Aunt Nastya, at the entrance to our stair.
We said hello.
Come and say goodbye to Genya, she said.
Where are you going? I asked.
Nowhere, she said. He died.
She said it quite calmly. I just stared at her.
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If you want to say goodbye, come today. Tomorrow were taking him to the
cemetery first thing.
I came home, walked in without taking off my coat and collapsed onto a chair.
Genya, dead? Genya! So my first childish attachment perhaps even love is over.
I was so fond of Genya; he was so cheerful and so clever. He taught us all to be kind
and to value friendship. I sat there and thought of Genya as if he was still alive, and
couldnt imagine him dead.
I didnt go to say goodbye. I want to remember him as he was alive. If Im destined
to survive this siege, Ill never forget him.
31 December. It will be New Year in a few hours time. But theres nothing to
remind us that its a special occasion. After eating a crust of bread each and drinking
some hot water, everyone in the house went off to their own rooms. I lay in bed
and thought about how we used to prepare for New Year before the war. Mama and
I would bring back a great big bushy fir tree The house would be filled with the
pungent smell of pine resin The dining table would be pushed up against the wall,
covered in decorations for the tree. We would fill muffs, bags and boxes with sweets
and toffees and hang chocolates in fancy wrappers on the tree with the toys Stop!
Wait a minute!
All of a sudden, I remembered some big, long sweets like paper crackers, which
we had kept unopened because of their colourful wrappers. We had already used them
to decorate the tree for a few years running. There were marshmallows inside the
wrappers, so the sweets werent heavy enough to pull down the branches of the tree.
Suddenly I realised that this treasure trove must still be in the box of decorations! I
shouted for joy, jumped off the bed, lit a lamp, got the box out of the cupboard and
took out the precious sweets. There were fifteen in all!
Mama and Granny were amazed and delighted. Uncle Misha woke up, and didnt
understand what was happening. We all dressed and sat at the table. Yevgenia Trofimovna
gave us the last of her tea. There were enough sweets for us to have three each!
We decided to eat them all at once!
Granny, frugal as ever, put two sweets away in the cupboard. The marshmallows
had all dried up, but they still tasted good, and made a very festive treat. The paraffin
lamp is lit. Happy New Year! Heres to 1942! Heres to more victories at the front!
Thats all were hoping for now. Its the only thing were wishing one another.
But our dear Genya has been left behind forever in 1941.
1942
8th January. Today our neighbour Auntie Sonya, who is mother to two little girls,
was waiting for me outside on the stairs. She held out three ration cards to me and
asked me to buy some bread for her, but to take it back to my house for the time being.
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You can eat the makeweights1 yourself, she said hurriedly. Ill explain to you later.
It turns out that her husband is eating everything he can find in the house. No matter
where Sonya hides the bread, it disappears as soon as her back is turned. Yesterday, as
soon as Auntie Sonya came in through the front door, he took away his familys tiny
ration quite openly, quite unashamed in front of the children. If this goes on, the girls
will die of starvation.
I remember seeing Sonyas husband walking in the park with his little girls before
the war. He was a very attentive young father, always making sure his little daughters
didnt run off too far or get their feet wet. Its hard to believe the way hes behaving
now. Hunger has probably driven him out of his mind.
Auntie Sonya brings her daughters to eat at our house now. The girls wear smart
red flannel dresses with white polka dots. I feel terribly sorry for them. They are such
quiet, sad little girls. They sit there, drinking their boiled water, dipping their tiny
fingers in the salt and breaking their bread into tiny pieces and nibbling away at it.
Dear God, when will it all end?
10 January. Yesterday, Verochka Pisakina came rushing in to see us. I hadnt seen
her for two weeks, even though we live in the same building. She looks completely
different: now she is a thin, pale adolescent in place of the rosy-cheeked, chubby
girl she once was. She had come on an errand. Lyosha Zhukovskys father had died.
Lyosha was in hospital, so his mother, Yelena Ivanovna, was asking any of Lyoshas
friends who could help to take his fathers body to the Shuvalov Cemetery. Yelena
Ivanovna was too ill and weak to do it herself. She had organised a grave for him and
paid in bread. A gravedigger would help to bury him.
Naturally, I agreed to help. So this morning we set off for the Shuvalov Cemetery.
We took the coffin on two sledges. Nina and Vera pulled the sledges from the front
and I pushed from behind with a stick. We went slowly, as we dont ourselves have
much strength. By the time we got to Poklonnaya Hill we were completely exhausted,
so we decided to take a rest. Suddenly we heard the wail of a siren. It was an air-raid
warning. There hadnt been any for such a long time. We heard anti-aircraft guns
firing in the distance. We started to hurry to try to get to the cemetery, which was still
a good way away. These days, nobody stops you on the street any more to make you
go to an air-raid shelter. We made haste, urged on by the sound of anti-aircraft fire.
When we got to the cemetery we found neither a grave nor a gravedigger at the
arranged spot. The office was shut. We called, but nobody answered. It was frightening
walking about the cemetery Lying about everywhere, inside the railed enclosures
and on the paths, were unburied corpses sewn into sheets, like the chrysalises of giant
insects. We had to leave the coffin unburied and go home.
1
The workers in bakery shops would add small pieces of bread to the ration, to bring the portion of bread weighed out
to precisely the right amount. These makeweights would often be eaten on the way home by the person who went to
fetch the ration.
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We didnt want to upset Yelena Ivanovna, so we told her that we had given her
husband a proper burial and that we could recall the location of his grave perfectly.
I dont know how well get ourselves out of this situation later on. Yelena Ivanovna
invited us to a funeral supper, but we said we were too tired, partly because didnt
want to eat her out of house and home especially as she was already so weak; and
partly because, after having to lie to her like that, we werent in any sort of mood
for it
19 January. I stood outside No. 9 and knocked at the door. I wanted to find out
what had happened to Dima Shokin. I heard a faint voice from inside calling out that
the door was open. Inside, the apartment was cold and dark. Dimas mother was lying
on a bed. Even before the war she was a small woman, like a little girl. Now, she could
have been mistaken for a child.
Wheres Dima? I asked, leaning over her.
Hes dead. What do you want?
I just came because I hadnt seen him for a while. Genya Prokopyuk has died
too.
Dimas mother sighed.
My husband was killed at the front. Then Dima died, too. I couldnt save him.
Now all I want is to die myself, the sooner the better.
I offered to light the fire, heat up some water and go and buy bread. No, thank
you, said Dimas mother. Theres no need. Then she turned her face to the wall.
I left.
29 January. Mama and I went to get water. When we came back and looked in the
mirror, we were amazed by how red and rosy our faces were. Mama looked particularly
strange with that high colour on her taut, bony face. Uncle Misha was sitting in the
living room by the stove, talking to Yevgenia Trofimovna. We were delighted to see
this, thinking he must be feeling better. I went up to the stove and warmed my hands
by the fire. My eyes met Uncle Mishas and I shuddered, in spite of myself, at the look
I saw there a sort of longing and envy. He sat with his hands on his stick, gazing at
me with a mixture of hopefulness and sadness. Then he announced that I still had a
lot of life left in me. It felt like a reproach and not without reason. After all, it was
Granny and I who had protested against evacuation. And last autumn, too, when
Uncle Misha still had his strength, he was given the opportunity to leave the occupied
territory to take part in forestry work, but he refused, because he didnt want to leave
us women on our own. He thought it would be easier for Mama if he stayed. But now
he has gone downhill faster than any of us.
3 February. Mama had gone out to queue and Granny to work. I settled myself at
the foot of Uncle Mishas bed, as usual. Outside the window, a hazy red sun hung over
the roofs. Uncle Misha seemed ill at ease. For quite a while he seemed to be struggling
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with himself, and then at last he said, Galya, I have such a dreadful pain in my chest.
It feels like a fire burning inside me. Im in agony, I cant bear it any more. Fetch me
a razor, I beg of you, and Ill cut my wrists. I stared at him in terror. Please, if you
love me, get me a razor, he said. I do love him, really, but I couldnt do what he was
asking. I burst out crying. Then Uncle Misha came to his senses, and began telling
me not to cry, and not to be afraid. Luckily, Mama came home soon after. I told her
everything. Hes going to die soon, she told me sadly. Hes poisoned himself with
something or other hes been drinking on the quiet. I found the empty bottle under
the pillow. Its burnt away his gullet.
Mama managed to get some medicine that made the pain in Uncle Mishas chest
better, and he fell asleep for a while. He still cant eat, he cant even swallow soup.
Im afraid to sleep with Misha, Mama told me. Im afraid Ill wake up to find him
stone cold. She sleeps with Granny now
7 February. Today when I gave my stepfather his medicine he winked at me and
said that his little chick was afraid to sleep with him. I understand her, my little
Galya-cub. Shes quite right.
In the night I woke to hear my mother and grandmother talking quietly together.
They were looking for five-kopeck pieces. I was briefly aware of a vague sense of
anxiety, but then I fell asleep. In the morning I found out that Uncle Misha had died.
So now we have a dead person in the house. He has been laid out on the removable
leaf from the dining table, which has been placed across two chairs, next to the outer
wall, behind a screen. Mama has said she wont put him into a common grave, but
will bury him at the Shuvalov Cemetery next to her first husband (my father).
8 February. Today Mama went to the cemetery to get somebody to dig a grave.
Weve been saving Uncle Mishas bread ration to pay for the burial. Mama saw an
old man outside the cemetery and offered him 600 g of bread to dig a grave. The man
hacked away at the frozen snow for a long time but couldnt get through to the soft
earth. Mama stood there shivering, beginning to worry that the man wouldnt finish
before nightfall. The old man toiled away stubbornly, using all his strength to stab at
the ground with his spade. He really wanted to earn his bread. In the end, quite worn
out, he sat down on a snowdrift and looked at Mama, shamefaced. She felt sorry for
him and gave him a piece of bread, and went off to find another gravedigger. The
second man turned out to be stronger clearly this wasnt the first time he had dug
a grave. He quickly broke through the frozen layer of snow with a crowbar, and soon
the loose, sandy earth began to fall into the spade of its own accord.
9 February. The day after Uncle Misha died, the housing officer brought round
a woman who had been left homeless and her four-year-old daughter Tamara. The
woman Anya had been living not far from the Kirov factory when their building
was destroyed by a bomb. The refugees have been housed throughout our building,
 105

but Anya didnt want to live in an empty flat. When Anya came into the apartment,
Mama was a little embarrassed. She didnt know what to say, because of Uncle
Mishas body. But Anya wasnt put out. There are dead bodies everywhere now, she
said. She even promised to help us with the burial. Anya is stronger than most of the
young women around in these tough times. In the evening, Mama and Anya sewed up
the body in a beige curtain. Anya persuaded Mama not to buy a coffin. Its no joke,
she said. Giving away a whole kilo of bread just for an extra weight that you have to
pull along yourself.
So now, the name Mikhail Abramovich Gromov will be engraved onto Papas
memorial column, with its star. I dont imagine those two friends thought for a
moment that theyd end up lying side by side, said Mama. Nor so soon, either. I
havent seen her cry
23 February. Strange as it may seem, recently weve been having a problem
with body lice. They are revolting insects that hide in the seams and folds of your
underwear. Their bites are horribly itchy.
Where have they come from? Now, whenever we have a moment, you will find us
taking off our underwear, turning it all inside out and inspecting it carefully. It would
be good to iron everything with a hot iron, but unfortunately
Well be getting vegetable oil and sugar twice a month and bread and a rissole every
day. The officer in charge of giving out this food is the captain, Tonya, a pleasant girl
with a smile for everyone.
Were not in danger of dying of starvation, but all the same, were tormented by
the hunger that gnaws away at us constantly. Were not being sent out to fires yet, but
were learning about firefighting and we man the telephones at the fire station1
25 February. While were learning about firefighting, were also being given other
work to do which is nothing to do with fires. Were going round houses to look for
dead people, people who have collapsed with hunger and children who have been left
orphaned. Its very difficult and frightening, to go into an apartment after knocking on
the door and getting no answer, and pushing on the unlocked door to find it opening;
to go in, calling out Is anybody here still alive? Still, it has to be done. Every staircase
and every flat has to be checked. Then we let the District Party Committee know
about any sick or weak people we find lying in freezing houses
7 March. Today I came running in and immediately saw that the divan was empty.
Yevgenia Trofimovna had died. She fell asleep towards evening and never woke up.
Granny was sitting at the table, eating soup made from a sparrow. She had
found the little bird frozen on the street. She had plucked it, and boiled it up with
some bay leaf. I looked into the saucepan. It was such a tiny sparrow! I had brought
back a piece of bread and a rissole. I put them in front of Granny. She looked at
1
The extra food Galya is now receiving is clearly connected with her new duties in the fire brigade.
 10 6

me and started to cry, then pinched off a little bit of bread and ate it, to help get the
sparrow down.
Mama came back from buying on the black market. She looks even thinner now,
I notice. The features of her face have coarsened, become almost mannish. Hunger
is eating away at us all pitilessly. Mama was tired, and lay down on the divan for a
while. She hadnt managed to exchange our tobacco for bread, but she had bought
some cottage cheese. It was black for some reason. We dont buy rissoles or meat jelly
at the market any more, as they may be made from carrion. Mama and Granny ate
the black cottage cheese, which looked like damp earth. I tried a bit too. It tasted of
nothing
9 March. We were coming back along Novosiltsev Street when we saw a soldier
lying in the snow. He was curled up comfortably with his head on a lump of snow. We
stood there, wondering if he was dead or alive. Suddenly Seryozhka Ivanov kicked
him and gave a frown. The soldier was frozen hard as a rock. Where had he come
from? Was he on his way back from an army hospital? On his way to a hospital? And
how was it that he was already frozen solid? He hadnt been there in the morning.
At first, I liked Seryozhka Ivanov, mainly because he looked like Genya the same
fair hair and blue eyes. But now, after seeing him kick that soldier, Ive gone off him.
Dead bodies should be treated with more respect
12 March. Yevgenia Trofimovna had asked to be buried in a separate grave. She
had put aside one and a half kilograms of sugar and a gold watch to pay for it. But
Mama has no strength left, and Anya is sick. So Mama gave the body for burial in a
common grave at the Piskarev Cemetery. And now she is distraught at not having
granted the last wish of a dying woman. Ive been trying to comfort her, telling her
nobody would have gone to visit Yevgenia Trofimovnas grave anyway, and that a
common grave might be looked after by the state
28 April. Were digging up the earth around our huts. The earth is hard, its been
trampled down for something like a hundred years and nothing has ever grown in it.
But still, were digging up one bit after another. In the centre of town theyre digging
up everything newspaper printing works, town squares, everything is going to be
used for vegetables. At Serdobolskaya Street my family have also been given a plot of
land in the back yard. I helped them dig it over, theres a lot of crushed brick in the
earth. Will vegetables grow there? Granny is digging in fertiliser (faeces). She's wasted
away to nothing, but she keeps her spirits up and keeps working
15 June. I only found out today that Vera Pisakina has died. She died of dysentery,
back in March, outside the occupied zone. She was taken off a train in Saratov;
meanwhile, her irresponsible mother went on without her. For Gods sake, didnt
Veras mother have any idea what happens at these evacuation points? Why on earth
didnt she stay with her daughter? Was she so desperate to start a new life, to have
 107

enough to eat again? Verochka! My dear, lovely friend, youve gone! You are no
longer with us. And Ive been thinking of you all this time as if you were alive.
22 June. Today, late in the evening, Granny and I saw Lyalya Nikitina, who lives
in the building opposite, stealing vegetables from other peoples garden patches. She
stood in the doorway looking around her and then quick as a flash she ran out, pulled
something up and ran back inside. The silly girl didnt realise we could see absolutely
everything that happens in the yard from our window.
Lyalya never used to play with our crowd in the yard. She lived in a different,
smaller building, only two storeys high, and always played in another little garden,
fenced off by sheds on three sides. The people who lived in her building had
transformed this bit of land into a beautiful space. Once I remember looking through
a gap between the sheds and seeing Lyalya running out of the house in a cherry-
coloured velvet dress, and her mother coming out behind, her hair beautifully styled.
Then Lyalya sat down on a bench between the flowering apple trees, squinting
into the sun, and her mother combed out her golden plaits. In the winter of 1941
Lyalyas father died and her mother, unable to stand the horror of the siege, cut her
wrists. Lyalya was left alone. Her mothers colleagues helped Lyalya find work at the
Geophysical Observatory. Early on in the war, the fence separating the flowering
orchard from the rest of the street was taken down, and our crowd found a new place
to meet up under a pear tree. Lyalya didnt often come out to join us, though; she
never felt completely at home in our group of friends. How is she managing to live
alone now, in these terrible times? Surely, nobody should judge a hungry girl for
eating radishes from somebody elses garden? Still, we should definitely warn her to
be more careful
22 August. Yesterday I turned fifteen. I spent the day on duty as usual. I didnt
tell anyone, and didnt ask them at home if I could take the day off. In any case, its
nothing special. Fifteen. Im not even old enough to have a passport.
I wonder what sort of day it would have been if it hadnt been for the war? Granny
would have made a big birthday cake and shed have definitely bought some crayfish.
As far as our family are concerned, crayfish are the biggest treat
15 September. There are rumours going round in our company that our regiment1
is going to be disbanded. Any soldiers will be being sent out on forestry work or to the
steppes to round up wild horses. Anybody under eighteen will be discharged. I really
hope these rumours dont come to anything.
20 September. I couldnt do what Valya did, as my parents are still alive (except
my stepfather). I have a place to live, so I was discharged, of course. So now Im no
longer at the firefighting point. I sit at home bored, wondering what to do and where
I should go to work.
1
i.e., the firefighting regiment which Galya has now joined.
 108

21 September. Mama spoke to her bosses and theyve taken me on for civil
defence work. Its hard work, although were digging in sandy ground. We work in
short bursts: we dig for fifteen minutes and rest for five. That way we can put all our
effort into the work for a short time and then get our strength back again. There are
other under-eighteen-year-olds working alongside me. We do the same work as the
adults. Then in the evening we can have a rest on trestle beds in a creaky wooden
house. If we want, we can stay overnight there. But Mama and I go home to take back
a piece of bread to Granny.
26 September. Today it was announced that the defence work on our patch
is coming to an end. All the factory workers are being called back to the factory,
including Mama
30 September. I registered for work at the factory today. Altogether there were
four of us young girls registering. I felt very nervous as the woman from personnel
was taking us round all the different managers in the factory and the District Party
Committee, I kept saying to myself that we were bound to be turned down at some
point, because we were so young. I was sure of it. But eventually they signed our
papers. Hurray! Now Im a factory trainee!
4 October. As it turns out, new workers at the factory are, for the most part, shoved
in at the deep end. Were doing something that seems easy enough, only Im finding it
very hard. For two days now Ive been on the shop floor where they make boxes. Im
given these special frames (the sides of a flat box) and I have to attach a plywood base
to them with special tacks. It sounds easy enough. But I keep hammering my fingers
for some reason and the tacks seem to do their best to go anywhere but into the sides
of the box. For the permanent factory workers its childs play. A couple of knocks
with the hammer, and they throw the finished box onto the conveyer belt without
even looking at the other side.
8 October. Less than a week has gone by and I am already back doing defence
work. Eight people from our group of factory trainees have been sent here so far. Im
in a work brigade with a whole lot of complete strangers, helping to build a permanent
weapon emplacement. Were building the emplacement on the banks of the Bolshaya
Nevka next to Liberty Bridge. Four of us, all girls, are taking up paving stones from
the pavement using crowbars and carrying them on stretchers to the site where the
emplacement will be built. They keep trying to make us work faster, as soon it will be
winter, and the frosts will set in
19 October. It was rainy and cold this morning, as I set off to the building site
and a group of workmen was sitting round a fire next to a big hole in the road. I
recognised one of them as Alyosha Piotrovsky, my former classmate. I remember
him as a mischievous boy, but kind, not the sort that got into fights. At the end of the
school year (but still before the war) I got a letter from Alyosha asking if I would be
 10 9

A line of evacuees from

Leningrad stretches out
along the so-called Road
of Life over Lake Ladoga.
All in all, about 659,000
people were evacuated
along this road during the
siege.

And this is the Road of

Death. During the years
of the Leningrad siege,
according to various
estimates, between
600,000 to one and a
half million people died,
only 3 per cent of whom
died in the shelling and
bombing, while 97 per
cent died of starvation.
TASS.
 110

his girlfriend. But I didnt like him I thought he was too tall and gangly, spoilt and
a bit of a mummys boy, and in any case, Id liked Genya ever since I was five, so I
turned him down, rather rudely. Today, I almost stepped on his foot, which was in a
rough workmans boot, and he didnt even notice me. Alyoshka! Just look at us, and
the things we have had to live through! How different we are now from those children
who once studied together in Class 6B!
20 October. I want to go to a dance at the Forestry Technical Academy, but what
can I wear? Ive already grown out of all my old dresses long ago and anyway theyre
no good, as theyre far too babyish.
I asked Lyusya Kuryak to help. She offered to sell me one of her dresses, which
I think is very nice and very cheap too, which is the main thing. Its a bit small for
her but just right for me. Its made of cherry-coloured silk with elbow-length sleeves,
slightly gathered at the shoulder, and a round neckline. The waist is tight, and the
skirt flares out. I put it on and had a look at myself in the mirror. I really am a young
woman now. Im tall and look older than fifteen. Im glad about that.
However many dresses I have in my life, Ill never forget this one, my first proper
grown-up dress. I fell in love with it straight away
30 October. Today at the building site (not far from the Erisman Hospital) we
came under a concentrated artillery attack. A shell exploded nearby, right opposite
our embrasure, in fact. Luckily, all four of us were behind it, but the other brigade
was outside taking down an old brick wall, and their commander, a terrific girl called
Katya, was killed. She was very energetic and cheerful and lovely-looking. For
some reason I thought of her as just like the Katyusha from the song1. They loaded
something onto a stretcher, something all bloody that bore no resemblance to Katya
at all.
12 November. Well, Ive made it through hell, a night shift at the fifth sweet
production unit (chocolates). I was put to work packing caramels into the very same
boxes I had to hammer together at the packaging production unit I still have the
marks on my fingers and nails to prove it. However often Ive tried to picture what it
is like in food-producing factories, I could never have imagined all those mountains
of sweets, separated off from the factory yard by a brick wall. Its difficult to even
imagine such a thing, of course, when youve seen no food for a year but bread, gruel,
slop, and soup like diluted porridge. They took us through the shop floor to the work
station. I looked around, and saw these brown slabs lying on the tables, and the same
stuff in tanks; it was difficult to grasp that it was all edible. I began putting caramels
into the boxes. They are joined together in slabs which are exactly the same size as the
boxes. Every slab has to be laid on a paper lining so that it doesnt stick, as the caramel

1
A song written in 1938 by Matvey Blanter and Mikhail Isakovsky which became very popular in wartime as a patriotic
refrain.
 111

is still very fresh, soft and breakable. I packed and packed, afraid all the time that I
might put a caramel into my mouth. Eventually, I came across a bar with a crushed
corner. I took off the squashed caramels and replaced them with new ones, and then
I was able to eat the rejects!
7 December. Lyalya often comes in to see me these days. Im still sharing my
smuggled goods with those who are hungry. When we make a big saucepan of soup,
I knock on the ceiling to invite Lyalya to eat with us. Lyalya is the most malnourished
of all of us since Galya Sviglinskaya left. She never talks about her family. Since the
death of her father and mother, and since she stopped getting news of her brother,
shes been completely alone. Yesterday, Ira Malinovskaya came to see us too. Shes
been working in a childrens nursery since leaving the firefighting point. She looks
good. Shes taller, and seems more grown up. On 16 December, it will be a year since
her mother died. We reminisced about that awful day when we had kept her alive with
wine until she died.
28 December Im being unfaithful to Vanya Rozhko; Im going to the dance
with Lyosha Mustafa. Thats quite a surname! They say hes a Tatar, but he might
as well be an Eskimo for all I care. I like Lyosha a lot. He moved in recently, on the
sixth floor, a young man in a brand new second lieutenants uniform. Hes not bad-
looking, with thick dark hair and white teeth. But the main thing is how he behaves.
Hes cheerful without being too talkative, and polite, without being fake. To me he
seems just right. For the time being we are still using the polite form vy, to address
one another even though Im only fifteen (though he doesnt know that) and hes
nineteen1.
1943. 2 January. I spent the New Year at the factory in the staff office. We drank
a few toasts to the success of our soldiers at the front. We had bread and herring to eat
with it an unheard-of luxury! Apparently a barrel of herring ended up among the
barrels of apple jam by mistake. I went back on duty at half past midnight. I had to
give Tosya the chance to celebrate the New Year. She had come along with Tolik of
course to take my place at the work station and I had run off to the office. I didnt
sleep all night
18 January. This evening when I came off duty I went to the office. The girls had
got hold of some liquid lipstick, very hard to wash off. I didnt want to be left out.
But whereas the girls just put on a little, I ham-fisted as usual covered the cork
in the stuff and put on so much that I looked as if my mouth was bleeding. First I
tried washing it off, but then I gave up and went to bed. Suddenly, Aunt Dina was
waking me, Hey, wake up, beautiful, she said. The blockade has been breached!

1
There are two ways of saying you in Russian, ty (equivalent to French tu) and vy (equivalent to French vous). The
first would be used in speaking to family, very good friends, children and people with whom one is on intimate terms.
The other form would be used on all other occasions. Here, however, the significance of vy is that it suggests a maturity
beyond Galyas years.
 112

I jumped up and wanted to kiss her but she laughed and backed away, afraid Id get
lipstick all over her. We all ran out into the factory yard to listen to the loudspeakers. I
ran out too, keeping my mouth covered with a scarf. There were lots of people in the
yard, all the night-shift workers and the managers. There was such joy at the news that
many of us were in tears. I understood for the first time why it is that people cry with
happiness. In the morning, some of the girls from our factory who had been working
at the distillery on a temporary basis were brought in. They had had such a celebration
yesterday that today they had to be brought in and put to bed like invalids.
We went off to work in high spirits. On the factory floor, people kept gathering
in little groups to discuss what had happened. The foremen didnt tell us off; in
fact they werent even around. After work we were told that all soldiers from anti-
aircraft defence should report the office, even those who were supposed to go home.
Meanwhile, we were sent off to clear snow. So much had fallen in the last few days
that it was impossible to walk or drive through it all. Our girls from the distillery were
sick and couldnt go out on snow duty, so we had to work till midnight. But nobody
complained about them, as everybody was happy and in a good mood. It is such a
pity that all the friends who have died couldnt share in the happiness. Such joy, and
nobody to share it with! We thought at first the Germans would bomb us out of spite,
but theyve fallen quiet. Theyre probably in shock.
25 January. Lyosha and I went to the cinema and watched The Boy from the
Taiga. Before the film they showed a newsreel about the breaking of the blockade.
When they showed the moment when the Leningrad front joined up with the Volkhov
front1, everybody in the cinema, just like the people on screen, was shouting Hooray
and tossing their caps in the air.
29 January. The Germans have been surrounded and completely routed outside
Stalingrad. Everything in my life goes on as before. I go to work Im on duty at the
office. Im in a good mood, and Im not the only one. Lyosha is off on an assignment.
Now Vanya Rozhko is hanging around me again. Hes wasting his time, though. I feel
Lyosha is with me, even when hes away. Im longing for him to come back. Usually,
hell come out into the yard, sit on the rail of the little pavilion and glance up furtively
at the windows of our apartment. If only hed come back soon!
10 April. I havent written for a long time, as nothing particular has happened. I
didnt start keeping a diary in order to write about going to the cinema or to dances
with my boyfriend. And in any case, Im not going out very often. Either Im on duty,
or Lyosha is away on some mission
3 May. The celebrations we had for the First of May were beyond my wildest
dreams. Mr Mazur, the director of our factory, organised a special banquet for all
1
The Leningrad and Volkhov fronts were involved in Operation Spark, a secret Soviet plan to break through the German
blockade of Leningrad in winter 19423. On 18 January 1943 the two armies linked at a point just north of the Workers
Settlement No. 1 near Shlisselburg, thus technically creating a break in the forces surrounding the city.
 113

the workers. All the workshops were cleaned up and decorated for the occasion, and
long tables were set out with starched white tablecloths, and people waiting at table,
just like in the good old days before the war. Waitresses went round the table serving
us, just like in a top restaurant. There was champagne and some sort of red wine. I
dont think there was any vodka. They served us open sandwiches with red caviar
and smoked sausage, and then they brought in stewed meat and potatoes. I drank a
glass of champagne that went straight to my head, so I sat there quietly, and listened
to our foremen proposing toasts. It all felt so good that at one point it seemed as if
wed already won the war and were celebrating our victory. Then we went out into the
factory yard where dancing was to take place. I didnt dance, as my shoes had fallen
apart back in the winter. I was wearing Grannys leather slippers, and so I just stood
huddled away at the side. But it didnt spoil the evening for me. Our bosses had had
quite a bit to drink, and they were dancing so wildly that it was a joy to watch. The
accordion player gave them any tune they asked for whether it was a Russian dance,
a gypsy dance, a Barynya or even a Russian quadrille1
6 June Mama is looking healthier and has gained weight. Shes found herself
a new friend called Sima, a rather plain, short little fellow. Now they go off together
to get their wages from the food production shops. Sima lost his entire family in the
winter of 1942. Its amazing that he managed to survive himself. Could it be possible
that he took food belonging to his family, like the father of the two little girls from
apartment No. 6? I try not to pay any attention to him, but Mama is offended by this,
and tells me that Sima is a very good man. Well, Im prepared to believe it. In general
she seems to fall on her feet when it comes to meeting people.
At the moment, we are getting constant air raids and artillery attacks day and
night. Because their weapons are on the high ground, the Germans can use precision
fire, and so there are a lot of casualties
3 September. I heard over the radio that the School of Technical Drawing is
carrying out an extra round of selections for first-year students. You can apply after
only six years of school. Im running into school to get a certificate
22 September. It was our first painting lesson today. Well be working only in
watercolours for the time being. The teacher, a skinny, sickly-looking man with an
impressive beard and a commanding manner (the boys nicknamed him Shishkin2
straight away) told us to hand over our tubes of black paint to him. Watercolour is a
light, translucent medium, he said, it cannot tolerate black or any sort of muddiness.
You will learn how to paint even deep shadows without using black.
3 October. Our troops continue to advance. Therell be no stopping them now
until they reach Berlin! Thats what people are saying. Theres a happy, celebratory
1
All the dances mentioned are varieties of what would normally be termed Russian dances, with varying tempos and
energetic movements, danced to accordion or balalaika.
2
After the famous landscape painter Ivan Shishkin, who was also thin with a large beard.
 114

feeling in the air. I go into the hairdressers regularly now to have my hair curled with
tongs. My hair is easy to manage; one visit lasts me a whole week. We go to dances
at the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Marble Palace1, but only on Saturdays or
Sundays. I really need some fancy shoes. I cant keep wearing other peoples shoes
to go to dances! Weve decided to sell our sewing machine (a present from Granny
Katya) and buy some good shoes. Im dreaming about them at night: elegant, light-
coloured shoes with a small heel
20 October. Our boys from the NKVD2 have moved out of the sixth floor to the
little house where the hairdressers used to be. Now we dont see each other so often
and I can never find out where Lyosha is, and havent heard a thing from him. I think
hes lost interest in me. I think about him every day. Im longing to see him. I havent
heard anything about him from the other boys, either, but I dont want to ask.
25 October. I came back from art school. There was nobody at home, it was cold
and dreary. I lit the stove its always so much more cheerful and homely when
the stove is burning. I sat there looking at the bright flames, and tears came into my
eyes and rolled down my cheeks. I sat crying, without even knowing what it was I
was crying about. The logs burnt down. I stood in the dark room, leaning against the
warm stove, overcome by a strange, anxious feeling, as if I were waiting for something.
Could it be that I missed Lyosha, might I have fallen in love with him? I wanted so
badly for him to come. Lyosha! Just then the bell rang, and my heart began to pound
so much that I could scarcely breathe, and I stood, rooted to the spot. Eventually I
went to open the door and there, out on the dark staircase, I saw Lyosha! I managed
to control my feelings and hide my confusion, and calmly ask him in. These days,
nobody entertains guests with food or drink, as theres nothing to offer. The two of us
sat on the divan and talked for about an hour, until Granny came home.
We didnt talk about anything in particular, or at least, not about anything serious.
I acted as though I was quite pleased to see him, whereas in actual fact I was overjoyed.
He joked away as usual. And then he left, without saying when he would come again.
I didnt ask him either. Where did this coolness between us come from? They say that
absence makes a weak love die, but a strong love stronger. But how could the two of
us ever have had a strong love?
21 November. Yesterday I caught a glimpse of Lyosha. I was about to go to the
cinema with the girls, and we went to get the tram. I noticed the girls were behaving
oddly; they wanted to go and stand at another stop, further away. After a bit of an
1
Galyas boyfriend Volodya is in the NKVD, as we find out later, hence her attendance at dances at the Ministry of
Internal Affairs. The Marble Palace is a large neo-classical palace on the banks of the Neva, used during Soviet times
first to house the Academy of Material Culture and later the Museum of V. I. Lenin.
2
The NKVD was the successor of the Cheka and the forerunner of the KGB the Soviet secret police. The ostensible
purpose of the organisation was to maintain internal order in the Soviet Union and deal with political opponents of the
Communist government. Arrests of enemies of the people by the NKVD reached a height in the years of the Terror in
the late 1930s. During wartime, the NKVD was responsible for dealing with suspected spies, deserters and other criminal
elements.
 115

argument, we went to the closer tram stop, the one outside the old hairdressers. We
got on the tram, and then Tosya told me, in a whisper, that Lyosha Mustafa had just
arrived. I wanted to get off the tram, but the girls pushed me back down in my seat. I
looked into the building and I saw Lyosha in the window, staring out, but at the other
carriage, so he didnt see me. I didnt catch his eye. I barely saw the film: all the time,
as I sat in the cinema, all I could see was Lyoshas dear, anxious face before my eyes.
Fine friends I have, trying to hide it from me that he had come back, and forcing me
to come with them to the cinema! Still, maybe its better this way. After all, he didnt
come to see me, for some reason.
7 December On Sunday Tosya and I had nothing to do and went to the
Red Corner1. We noticed some new people there, officers with the epaulettes of
artillerymen.We got talking.
It turned out that their unit was billeted in a school not far from us. We talked
to two young men, Volodya Filippov and Zhenya Sladkov. The next day we invited
them back to my house. We found out that Volodya is a medic, and for some reason
Zhenya is a chemist. I had Lyalya over that evening and I thought Zhenya took a
liking to her
18 December. Today, Volodya came earlier than usual, without Zhenya. He said
that he was bored with Tosya and wanted to see me. (An unexpected turn of events!)
Volodya invited me to one of the regular shows at the Vyborg Palace of Culture. I told
Tosya about it this evening. She sighed. I think she was relieved.
22 December. Were still meeting at my house, as before. Zhenya Sladkov cant go
a day without seeing Lyalya. Lyalya has blossomed, and shes looking much prettier.
This year, she has been given a big allotment next to the Geophysical Observatory.
Its largely thanks to the vegetables from the allotment, particularly potatoes, that she
has filled out. Theres one problem: Lyalya has taken up smoking, shes developed
quite a habit. She is always on the look-out for cigarettes, as she never has her own.
Zhenya himself doesnt smoke, but he told me he understands Lyalya. In the months
when food was really scarce, tobacco was given out instead of ration cards and a lot of
people took up smoking to suppress their hunger pangs. Its quite a sight this blue-
eyed, golden-haired girl, with a roll-up in her mouth, blowing out smoke through her
little snub nose. Im always fretting, and asking Zhenya what we can do and how we
can get her to stop. But he just brushes my worries aside, and says that worse things
have happened.
25 December. Volodya invited me to the film One Hundred Men and a Girl2. I
was delighted to go, and we went off to the October cinema on Nevsky Prospekt.
There were crowds of people outside asking if anyone had a spare ticket. It was

1
A special room for propaganda-related activities, attached to another organisation such as a factory.
2
A 1937 musical comedy starring Deanna Durbin.
 116

warm and comfortable in the cinema, and a small orchestra was playing. And then
it happened
A shell exploded not far away. We felt the whole building shake. But the orchestra
kept on playing and people sat calmly listening. The next shell fell practically on top
of us. The windows were blown out and the blue curtains fluttered and blew out like
sails. The orchestra stopped playing, but people stayed where they were. Then the
manager came in, and was about to say something when his words were drowned out
by another shell blast. He gave up and went out. I looked around. The orchestra had
gone and people were streaming towards the exit. I got so angry I marched through
the foyer and sat down right next to the window. I wanted so badly to watch the film,
to see Deanna Durbin!
Volodya sat down next to me and said I was a brave girl. Now that the orchestra
had stopped playing, we could hear the groans of wounded people right under the
window of the cinema. Volodya told me to go downstairs and wait for him, and ran
out to give first aid to people who were hurt. I waited for him for a long time, but then
I couldnt stand it any more, and I went out through a service entrance onto Nevsky
Prospekt. At the corner I almost stumbled over some bodies, which I mistook for a
dirty pile of snow. I screamed and backed away. I dont know why it frightened me
so much: after all, during the siege Ive seen hundreds of dead bodies. Suddenly I felt
somebody grab me by the shoulders. It was Volodya! I was so pleased to see him, I
greeted him like a brother. Volodya told me that one shell had hit a tram as it crossed
Liteyny Prospekt and the other had exploded on Nevsky Prospekt at the crossing with
Rubinshteyn Street. The tramline had been destroyed and the trams werent running
along Liteyny Prospekt, so we set off home on foot.
Every time I saw a dirty heap of snow on the pavement I felt an inexplicable
feeling of dread. Without wanting to, I found myself looking carefully at each one,
and only once I had assured myself it was snow could I walk past with relief. Naturally
I did my best to hide it from Volodya.
At the Finland Station we got a tram that was going to the Vyborg Side, and got
home at last.
28 December. This evening, Volodya suggested we go for a walk in the park. The
thunder of constant bombardments could be heard coming from the city centre; it
would have been foolish to try to go into town. We walked right to the end of the
park and back. It was a wonderful winter evening. Large snowflakes were drifting
down, and the trees, bushes and telegraph lines were white with hoar frost. The snow
crunched under our feet in the light frost, and the air smelt fresh and cold. As we went
under a streetlamp, Volodya suddenly took me in his arms and kissed me. We went on
a little further and then he kissed me under a streetlamp again. I couldnt help myself,
I burst out laughing. Volodya says theyre having a grand party for New Year and he
 117

wants me to come with him. What can I wear? I have shoes, but no dress. My cherry-
coloured dress, the only one I have, is no good for this time of year. Lida Ryabtseva
came to my aid. She has lots of clothes, as she is two years older than me and her
parents had time to buy her lots of nice things before the war. Now Lida is happy to
lend out these clothes to girls who have nothing to wear. She picked out a dress that
suited me: a black velvet dress with a white lace collar and cuffs. Thank you for being
so generous, Lida!
Lyalya came running over, beaming. Shes going with Zhenya to the New Year
party.
2 January 1944. What a New Year we had! Better than anything I could have
dreamed of. The boys came to pick us up and I noticed that Volodyas eyes were
shining. He must have liked the way I looked in my velvet dress
We went into the building. In the entrance lobby it was terribly cramped, with heaps
of overcoats and soldiers greatcoats hanging up on both sides; we barely managed to
squeeze our way through them. When we came into the main hall, we gasped. It
was absolutely enormous, with ceilings three times higher than in our house about
forty-five or fifty metres high. A real banqueting hall. There was a marvellous marble
fireplace and a fir tree in the window, and a great long table beautifully decorated for
the occasion, right down the middle. And on the table, all sorts of good things laid
out: American luncheon meat, tinned salami, slices of meat, pickled cucumbers. But
I only saw all that later. When we came in, Lyalya and I were seated in some armchairs
and young men began coming up to us to introduce themselves. At this point, we were
the only girls there. Our young men went off somewhere, and we found ourselves
surrounded by strange men. One of them sat right down on the carpet next to my
armchair and began making polite conversation. Lyalya was surrounded by a whole
crowd of officers. I noticed her pulling down her dress to cover her legs, which are still
rather thin. I couldnt believe all the attention we were getting! I thought things like
that only happened in the movies. Then they wound up the gramophone and people
began to dance. I noticed one boy who was sitting at table next to the wall and who
looked very sad. New boys kept coming up, and more girls arrived, but by this time,
people had stopped introducing themselves, and were just saying hello. The officer
sitting on the carpet asked me how old I was. I told him I was sixteen and a half,
and he shook his head and smiled. Then the battalion commander came in with his
wife, and everybody began to take their places at the table. Volodya and I ended up
opposite the sad-looking boy. His name is Sasha Romanov. Volodya whispered to me
that all his relatives had been killed in the German occupation.
The battalion commander stood up and everyone fell silent. He spoke a little
about the triumphant progress of the Soviet army at the front lines, and reminded us
that there were many battles ahead, one of which would take place very soon. Then he
 118

wished us all a Happy New Year. The clock struck midnight and everybody shouted
Hooray! and lifted their glasses. Then there were more conversations, more dancing
and more eating. Zhenya and Volodya kept piling food onto our plates, aware that
we were hungry. But when youve been hungry for a whole year, how can you make
up for it in one night? I looked at all the people round the table. Volodya told me the
names of his comrades and told me a little bit about them. As I understood it, they
were in a mortar unit. They were having a short break at the moment before going in
again for another campaign.
How I wished the evening would never end! But it did end eventually, and we
set off home. As we were saying goodbye, Volodya told me that we would definitely
celebrate the old New Year too, if they dont send them away before the 13th of
January1
7 January. Yesterday we had already gone to bed when there was a ring at the
door. I pulled on my blue satin dressing gown and opened the door. And there, on
the landing, who should I see but Volodya. I was quite taken aback. He came into the
hall and looked at me shyly. It turned out that he had got a lift over with some friends
who were driving past my house. They were coming back in an hour to pick him up.
He didnt want to come through to our room, as he was afraid of waking Tosya (he
didnt realise that the two of us arent sisters and that we live in different apartments).
We stood leaning against the chest of drawers, talking in hushed voices. I was amazed
that he had driven two and a half hours for the sake of an hour-long conversation with
a girl he has only known for a month!
It turned out that Volodya found he had forgotten to tell me the most important
thing yesterday and wanted to put things right. So when the chance came for him to
get a ride over to my house, he took it. Then he told me that he loved me, and that I
should look on him as a friend and ally. Unfortunately, I couldnt honestly tell him
that I returned his feelings. I still wasnt sure whether I had stopped loving Lyosha,
or what direction my young life would take. I stood and said nothing, and he didnt
press me any further. He was happy anyway. Then he put on his greatcoat, kissed me,
squeezed my hand and told me to write as often as I could, and left.
I lay down in bed and thought of Volodya, Zhenya, Sasha and other officers I
know who are now preparing for a great battle.
12 January. I got a letter from Volodya. Greetings from the front, dearest Galya.
I send you a heartfelt greeting and warmest regards. Galya, how I enjoy thinking of
our meetings. They were the source of endless joy and happiness, happiness that,
perhaps, will not come our way again for a while. I want you to know that you have
a friend who will never forget you, no matter where he is, and who is longing to see
you again. Then he wrote out the words of a song from the film Two Warriors, How
1
Old New Year 14 January, according to the Orthodox calendar, so the celebration would be on 13 January.
 119

I love to look deep into your gentle eyes1 etc. Then he sent his regards to Mama,
Granny, Tosya and Lyalya. Not a word about military action.
The letter is written on a military postcard2 with a picture: a soldier holding up
the shattered helmet of a German soldier and a pioneer holding a chart showing
top marks. In the middle is written Outstanding! and along the top Death to the
German Invaders! Volodyas address is very short: Field Post Office 86732.
Outside the window, the rumble of artillery fire
20 January. Today I found a note in our post box with a request to go to the army
hospital. The note was signed Sasha Romanov. I ran straight there, but I was told
at the gatehouse that it was dinner hour and that after dinner it was rest hour, so
no visitors were allowed. I went along later and they let me in. I found Sasha. He
had been wounded in the arm and neck. It turns out that Volodya gave Sasha my
address just in case. And now its come in handy, as the hospital is right next to our
house. Sasha told me about the first Soviet advance and about the Katyushas3 and the
intensive bombardment theyre able to inflict on the Fascists. When he was wounded
he lay for a long time covered in earth and snow, until he dug himself out and the
medical orderlies picked him up. Actually, he said, I hadnt wanted to live since I
heard that all my family had been killed. But when I was covered in earth, I felt as if
Id been buried alive, and I thought, No. Ill keep going for a while yet. I thought
he seemed happier and more lively. Ill keep visiting him.
Nothing has changed at home. Granny is on guard duty at the shop and Mama
is working in the mechanical plant. Mama barely eats a thing at home. She leaves
everything for me and Granny. But I still feel hungry all the time. Ropsha, Krasnoe
Selo and Peterhof have already been liberated. Maybe the shelling will stop soon? Its
hard to imagine. Could it really be that all the attacks will stop?
21 January. When Volodya went away he gave me a little photograph of himself.
This Sunday I decided to draw a big portrait from it. It turned out very well. I was
sorry in the end that Id used grey paper I never thought it would turn out so well.
There are reports coming over the radio of towns which have been liberated. The
Germans have even been driven out of Novgorod!
I imagined our boys, out there in the cold, surrounded by death, in the midst of
constant battles. Dear Lord, help them, Granny keeps saying.
23 January. I got a third letter from Volodya. He writes that he hasnt written
many letters as its hard for him to find either the time or a place to write. He hasnt
taken off his felt boots or his fur coat since he left Leningrad. Now he is more than
two hundred kilometres away from us, he has to write on the move, they keep moving
1
Soviet wartime film directed by Leonid Lukov. The line quoted is from the song Dark is the Night (Tyomnaya noch)
made famous by the film.
2
Russian soldiers at the front wrote home on special-issue postcards called voinskie pisma (soldiers letters) decorated
with propaganda pictures.
3
Soviet rocket launchers used in WWII.
 120

on and its awkward to write. How I would love to spend just a few days out there at
the front, where Volodya, Zhenya and the other lads are carrying out their sacred
mission.
27 January. Today the powerful voice of Levitan1 came over the radio. This is
an announcement by the Soviet Bureau of Information. Leningrad has been fully
liberated from enemy troops. So here it is: the joyful news weve all been waiting for
for so long! Today there will be a celebratory salute. I cant write any more, Im crying
from happiness.
28 January. On the orders of General Govorov there was a 24-salvo salute by 324
guns. Our city was saluting the troops of the Leningrad front. It was a greeting and a
sign of gratitude to Volodya, Zhenya and absolutely every last one of the soldiers who
have liberated us. The salute was magnificent. It felt as if the Fascists must be able to
hear the thunder of the guns and see the flashes and be more terrified than they have
ever been. Each time a salvo was fired, shivers ran up my spine, it was so majestic and
so beautiful. The spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Rostral Columns and the
buildings next to Palace Bridge were all lit up by searchlights. There were people as
far as the eye could see. Many people were in tears.
Yes, we have lived through much sorrow and now it is time for joy. The biggest joy
of all is still ahead. I believe we dont have long to wait for our final victory!

1
Yury Levitan (19141983), a Soviet radio announcer who worked with Moscow Radio and presented regular bulletins
throughout the war.
 122

January has been no better than December for us. In January, Grandma Grusha,
Uncle Vasya and Aunt Shura, Sima and Uncle Zhenya all died. The lines were written in
unfamiliar handwriting in a lined notebook, its pages yellow with age, under an unknown
name. The story behind this diary is a genuine detective story. In spring 2010, some major
renovation work was being carried out on an apartment at 41 Galernaya Street in St
Petersburg. During the work, these notes were discovered in a ceiling cupboard, abandoned
among the moth-eaten overcoats and old television sets. On the first page of the notebook
was a name: Kapitolina Voznesenskaya. There was no other clue to the writers identity.
The apartment on Galernaya Street was once home to the famous Russian poet
Alexander Blok and his wife, before becoming a communal apartment, occupied by a
constantly changing stream of tenants, many of whom left belongings behind in the shared
cupboards. The young family living in the apartment when the notebook was found, the
Pestrikovs, took their discovery to the small Petersburg publishing house Krasny Matros
(Red Sailor). The diary was published as a separate book, timed to coincide with the 70th
anniversary of the lifting of the siege.
Up to that point, research in various archives and appeals to the Ministry of Internal
Affairs had proved fruitless, and had failed to unearth a trace of the author of the notebook.
But once the diary was published, more information about Kapitolinas story, broken off in
1942, began to come to light.
Friends of Kapitolina came forward and revealed that she had begun to keep a diary
at the age of fourteen, that she had survived the siege and worked on the railways after the
war, and then as deputy human resources manager of the household chemicals supplier
Lenbytkhim until her retirement. She had died in 1995, broken-hearted at the loss of her
only daughter, who had died just forty days previously. After her death, her husband had
lost the apartment and had spent the rest of his life with relatives in the communal apartment
on Galernaya Street. He took with him a few possessions, among them his late wifes siege
diary. After his death, this diary, along with many other items, ended up in the shared
cupboard.
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1941
24 October. This morning we went to get bread it is very cold the heating isnt on
yet we are saved by our paraffin stove. If it werent for the stove I dont know what we
would do. Mama is soaking mustard hoping to use it to make fritters but I dont know
how they will turn out. After dinner we went to Aunt Tonya and she gave us a whole
bag full of crockery. Uncle Seryozha brought a stove and Papa a sack of cabbage
leaves. Theyll probably put the heating on tomorrow. But theres not a chance in hell
the Tomilins are getting the paraffin stove, they should give us back some sauerkraut
in that case.
[No date] has lost the bread ration cards, something he has never done before,
he lost his, mine and Tanyas and now we are living on 400 g of bread. Were staying
alive thanks to rusks. In the evening, Mama gives us each five rusks (cut up small, like
for children) and in the morning when Uncle Seryozha and Papa go out Mama gives
them eight rusks. But were all pleased to be getting out of this living hell, soon we
will probably be evacuated. Uncle Seryozha will get us a heated freight car and well
go somewhere far away
5 November. Tanya went out early to the school as usual, Mama to school and
Papa and Uncle Seryozha to work. I was left on my own. I tidied our room and sat
down to read. Soon Mama came home, but she didnt bring anything. I finished
reading and began my embroidery. I want to finish it by tomorrow. Im not sure how
it will turn out, then Mama made cocoa and we had it with bread and coconut oil.
Theyre bringing supplies for soldiers into the basement of our building for storage.
People are saying its bad to have them so close by, but I dont think they could store
very much in such a small building, and anyway I dont even want to think about it. A
bomb fell on a building in Nadezhdinskaya Street and ripped half of it away, it went
right through all the floors (it was a five-storey building). There were probably a lot
of casualties.
It turns out that yesterday a bomb fell in our block but didnt go off, or otherwise
we would have had all sorts of disaster here, too.
Papa brought back seven portions of cabbage soup from work, he spilt some on
the tram too, on some people who were right next to him, unfortunately. Today,
somebody pinched 200 g of bread from Papa in the canteen whats more they took it
from right under his nose. Still, maybe its a good thing and he wont be so careless in
future. We had to sit in the basement because of an artillery bombardment and while
we were there we heard the siren go off. The air raid went on for about an hour. After
the all-clear had sounded we went home, drank some tea and went to bed. Suddenly
I heard Mama waking me, I was in the middle of a nice dream, I sat up on the bed
confused, then I listened out and heard the wail of the siren and it was only then I
realised it was an air raid. It went on until quarter past midnight. We went to bed and
 124

slept soundly. Olya, Lyalya and Valya came today too. The Pavlovs have been given
a room in the apartment where the Lavygins live, theyve moved in already and for
two weeks now they havent had to go to sleep in their clothes (but theyre on the first
floor, and were on the fourth
9 November. Tanya is off school today. As it was so cold in our room we drank
tea in bed. Mama went out for water. (Its quite a funny sight, all these angry folk
are walking about the streets of Leningrad, carrying buckets, kettles and saucepans.)
Tanya got up and I finished the embroidery on my shirt. Mama came back and gave
us a row for not clearing up We did everything we had to do except our algebra
homework. We sat down to it but didnt feel like doing anything. The only thing
we felt like doing was eating. At last there was a ring at the doorbell: it was Uncle
Seryozha. He hadnt had much luck today and didnt bring us a lot of soup, but it was
enough for me. And Tanya ate so much cabbage soup she couldnt even bend over
afterwards. Shes incredibly greedy. Today Uncle Seryozha brought us each a shirt
and Tanya grabbed them both for herself. Uncle Seryozha was about to protest but
Mama said let her take them, as she had enough material to make me some shirts. We
found out that yesterday a delayed-action bomb was dropped on Kolomenskaya. It
was the explosion from the bomb that made our house shake yesterday. There were
no more alerts and we had a good nights sleep
11 November. Early this morning Mama and I went to Vasilevsky Island to register
our ration cards and at the same time to give notice of our departure. When we got
there, Auntie Shura was making pork meatballs. They have everything they need.
And that wont change. Their sort will be all right, no matter what. Mikhail didnt
talk to us. We ignored him too, though. Today that piece of shit dared raise a hand
to Sima and call her a hunchback. I wont let him get away with it. We left as quickly
as we could. And Mishka took my gloves, even though he doesnt need them at all.
18 November. I havent written in my diary for a few days. I didnt write because
of the cold. Our boiler burst and it was horribly cold in our room. Uncle Seryozha
went to have it out with Kats (the housing manager). I dont know if that was what
did it, but now the heating is already working for the second day, the pipes are boiling
hot. Everything in the room is slowly heating up. Yesterday we had a flood. Water was
pouring from the ceiling. Mama and Olga Ivanovna were catching it in buckets and
taking it off to the bathroom. Things are starting to look bad, weve almost run out of
cabbage. I dont know what were going to eat now. Uncle Seryozha suggested that
we get the Tomilins to give us back our cabbage, but Mama is dead set against it. Papa
thinks we should anyway. But the whole thing is really awkward. Its like they say:
Give it to a grey cat and youll never get it back.
25 November. Something happened today that really surprised us. Mama made
some soup with oatmeal and left it on the stove to thicken up. A little while later
 125

Mama had a nice thick gruel and was pleased that it had cooked up so well and she
hadnt had to use too much firewood. She sat for a while in our room1 and went back
to admire the gruel again and saw, to her horror, that half of it was gone. She told
Alexandra Ivanovna and Zinaida Fyodorovna. They both suspected the Umrikhins.
Mama was distraught as we dont have very much oatmeal and Uncle Seryozha and
Papa were about to come back home, too. But we couldnt do anything about it and
she had to make some more. Tanya went to school today, there were twelve people
in class and yesterday there were eight. How are people expected to study when they
are starving
28 November. This is the third day Mama hasnt cooked anything. Papas legs
are swollen. Uncle Seryozha is much thinner. Mama feels dizzy all the time, and I
feel horribly weak. Today the alerts went off and we had to go down to the basement,
because the bombing was so heavy that up on the fourth floor the building was swaying
from side to side like a swing. I got downstairs alright but barely managed to get back
up again hanging on to the banisters all the way. Now when I get up too quickly I lose
my balance and almost black out. The Germans have started bombing in the daytime.
They begin about 1 p.m. and end at 5 or 6 in the evening. So far weve been sitting
at home every day, but today we couldnt stay in the house. Its surprising that we
havent seen a single Soviet plane. Probably theyve all been sent off to the Moscow
front. People are saying that these days are critical
1 December. Winter is here and were still at war. The Germans are constantly
bombing and shelling the city. Today Papa didnt bring any sweets but just some yeast
soup2, and told us that he wouldnt even be able to bring that tomorrow. All we have
left is one pan of soup. We didnt drink any tea this evening as there was nothing to
have with it. Mama wanted to ask Zinaida to lend us some sugar (she borrowed some
from us before) but Zinaida started to cry saying she didnt have any, and all the
time she was boiling up some sickly-sweet fruit drink. Shes a horrible woman. She
just pretends to be really kind all the time. Yesterday Viktor went to queue for beer
and Mama gave him our cards, so that he could get some for us at the same time.
We didnt see him come in. Then Mama asked Zinaida, Well, did Viktor bring back
some beer? She gave us back our cards, and asked where we thought he was supposed
to get it. But he did get some. I wont forget that in a hurry.
3 December. In the morning Uncle Seryozha didnt come and Mama was worried
about him. In the afternoon Mama heated up some soup for him, but he still didnt
come. He came at eight oclock in the end, bringing a sack of cabbage leaves and
frozen cabbage stalks. Theyre very tasty and sweet, but really cold, so they hurt your
teeth. Uncle Seryozha ate nothing but these stalks yesterday and he got really sick
1
The room would be the familys space in a communal apartment, whereas the gruel would have been on the stove in a
shared kitchen, hence the suspected theft.
2
Yeast mixed with warm water, an unappetising mixture which was drunk during the siege in an effort to stave off hunger.
 126

of them. Theyve reduced the ration again the grain and meat ration for manual
workers has been cut to 200 g and the same goes for non-manual workers. If this goes
on another week, I think Papa will die. He looks terrible, nothing but skin and bone,
he walks about like a shadow, very unsteady on his feet. We have had no tea now for
three days, theres nothing to drink. How is a grown man supposed to live on 125 g
of bread and some yeast soup without a speck of anything in it? Were running out of
butter. Its a good thing we have cabbage
6 December. December was a terrible month, as Papa died on the 20th of
December. Im so sorry I wasnt with him when he died. I cant get used to it, I
keep thinking the doorbell will ring any moment I keep dreaming of him. Id give
anything for him still to be alive. We didnt get to use his bread ration card as when
Mama went to get bread early in the morning (it was still dark and they just had wick-
lamps in the shops) the woman behind the counter stole them. All in all, December
was a terrible month for us.
1942
January. January has been no better than December for us. In January, Grandma
Grusha, Uncle Vasya and Auntie Shura, Sima and Uncle Zhenya all died. We were
very hungry all January. There were queues for bread. We had to queue for six hours at
a time. Mama has got very thin and looks like death. Not long ago she went out to get
bread at seven in the morning and came back at six in the evening. She had a bad spell
in the shop and fell. I cant describe what I went through. Now Im afraid to let her
go far from the house. Shes in a very bad way. Tanya and I dont let her go anywhere.
Food isnt being given out anywhere, but if it is, Tanya and I have to trek all the way
to the distribution centre at Baltic Station. Its just a nightmare.
March. This month Mama almost died, everyone was telling her she wouldnt last
five days. She couldnt walk without falling over. It was because Auntie Olya took a
coupon from our card for 500 g of grain and there wasnt enough for us. After that,
I started going off to the canteen and getting five portions of porridge. Well, we got
through our vouchers pretty quickly and we had nothing left ten days before the end
of the month. So Tanya and I went up to the Klinsky Market every morning to buy
a little piece of coconut oilcake for 60 roubles. We cooked up some disgusting slop
every morning and evening which I dont even want to think about now. Naturally,
Mamas health got worse. It was a good thing the Shumovskys got us some pork at a
high price it saved Mamas life.
April. In April, things were a bit better, thank God. Mama got a job as a guard first
at a base and then at a shop. She got to know the manager at the base, and he began
to get her food at a high price, cereal for 400 roubles, then sugar for 500 roubles, rice
for 650 roubles, condensed milk for 200 roubles, flour for 500 roubles and meat for
150 roubles. Mama began to put on weight, but she was still very poorly at first and
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could barely walk to work with a stick and had to come home on a sledge (I would
go and fetch her). Oh, I almost forgot to say that I have enrolled at the technical
school. They give us nice food there but in very small portions, as if they were feeding
chickens. Still, it doesn't matter
June. In June we were sent to work on vegetable plots with the tech. school.
30 June. We were woken at six thirty, and had breakfast. Today at breakfast, they
gave us 25 g of smoked sausage. The only bad thing was theyd poured boiling water
over it. Now Im rushing off on night duty. Tomorrow Ill be free all day. I need to
write a letter to Mama in Leningrad. Theyll probably send us back there soon. Id
like to go back, but Im afraid of the shelling. Its very scary there. The Germans are
planning to take Leningrad by storm, which is very scary. The Germans have been
storming Sebastopol for twenty-eight days1, theres nothing left of it but the people
in the city havent been too badly hit; they can dig themselves into the ground there
because its all mountains. In general, July is going to be critical.
1 July. We had sausage again this morning. Yesterday I was on duty all night so
Im resting today. Right after breakfast, they announced that tomorrow we all had to
have our heads shaved. We all protested, of course. So they took us to the hairdresser,
and managed to shave three girls heads. We ran away, but when we came into the
canteen for lunch, the doctor wouldnt let them give us (the girls who didnt have
their heads shaved) any lunch. I thought for a second, then tied a headscarf round my
head and went back to the canteen. It looked as if Id had my head shaved, so I got
my lunch, while the other girls went hungry till six. After dinner, I packed up my kit
and ran off to Leningrad, after giving them some excuse.
2 July. Ledya, Nina and Tasya and a few girls from the new group have run away
with me into town. Today, when I went in to get my ration I found out that our
college is being evacuated to Kazan or Kuybyshev. We all have to take our parents
with us. I dont get it. Mama doesnt want to go anywhere, and in any case our army
has been forced to retreat at several points along the front. I dont believe it! Im not
going to be evacuated. I want to get a job
4 July. Tomorrow at 3.30, our school is leaving for Kuybyshev. They say theyll
be leaving from Moscow Station and going via Moscow, but I dont believe it, I think
theyll be going across Lake Ladoga. Im not going anywhere. I dont know how
Ill show my face tomorrow at the school. I want to get work with the post office.
Today our troops abandoned Sebastopol. On International Prospekt they are selling
perfume. It costs 110 roubles for a small bottle. Today I went to the sanitation point2.
The boys and girls were all washing together its shocking. They issued us each with
a sheet, a vest, a pair of underpants, a work shirt and a padded jacket.
1
Sebastopol, the last Soviet bastion in the Crimea at this point, had been under attack from the German army since the
previous December, but the Germans had begun a fresh bombardment of the city on 2 June.
2
Sanitation points were set up partly to prevent the spread of disease through parasites (such as epidemic typhus).
 128

5 July. Today our school left the city. Only five girls and a few boys stayed behind
in Leningrad.
11 July After getting our dinner, we set off slowly home. We were just getting
to the Trinity Church when a shell exploded with a great boom right next to us. Then
all these shells came whistling down and people started running in all directions.
Like a fool, without thinking, I ran into the park. Mama cried out to me to get into
a doorway, so I started running, and the shells kept on exploding all round while
I ran along with my soup and my porridge. Finally I made it into a doorway. The
bombardment lasted about thirty-five minutes. At last it was all over and we set off
quickly for home. We got in, and hadnt even had time to eat when they announced
another artillery attack on the radio, and meanwhile there were still fires burning and
the smell of gunpowder from the last attack. The whole thing lasted about an hour
and a half. The Germans were really laying into us. I just dont know if we should
evacuate or not. Our troops have surrendered Rossosh
22 July. Today I was on kitchen duty so I had to get up early, which I didnt want
to do. Dina woke me. They gave us 50 g of sprats this morning. I strung them and
hung them myself. Its been raining for the last few days and we havent been going
to work. Its horribly cold outside. It doesnt seem like summer. The local boys are
giving us no peace at the moment. They keep attacking all the students from the
technical school. Yesterday I was hit on the side of the head by a stone (it almost drew
blood) and once in the leg and in the back with a brick. Dina, Yuri and Ira wanted to
go to the cinema but they didnt let us. Today, we lost a cow, or rather, it ran away
from the herdsmen and all the farm workers were looking for it. After a long search,
it was finally found. By way of thanks, all the farm workers were given an extra 75 g of
bread and 400 g of hot milk.
23 July Today we wanted to go to the cinema but it was very late, so we just took
a walk and came back. One girl has brought a guitar from Leningrad, but its very out
of tune, and we wanted to go to the boys and ask them to tune it for us. But as we got
close to the hostel, Maria Andreevna (the House Officer) and Tarankov (the Military
Instructor) met us. They started laughing at us for going to the boys with the guitar,
so we turned round and went home
27 July. When I woke up in the morning, I found that Mama and Tanya had
already gone. I lay around in bed for a little, then got up, made tea and did a bit of
cleaning and just then Mama came back. She had already been out to the Ligovka
and bought curd cheese cakes for 10 roubles. I had brought back three potatoes,
some beetroot and turnips. Mama and I poured egg on top and fried it all up. It was
delicious. I havent had a meal like that in ages
1 August. My throats really sore, and all red inside. It really hurts. Its a very windy
day and I have to go to work. I more or less managed to get through the mornings
 129

work, though actually we were just mucking around. Yurka is crazy about Ira, I thought
he would kiss her out in the field. Pavlik is always getting in a mood about something or
other. After lunch we went out to work again, but I felt awful and Ira let me go home.
After dinner I went out with the girls to look for berries but we didnt find a damn thing
it was dark and cold. We saw a parachute probably a German one. At ten in the
evening we went to the hostel to dance with the boys. We took the gramophone down
there. As soon as we started dancing, the house manager came in. We felt awkward and
we went home. German and Pavlik brought back the gramophone late at night. They
also brought a new girl whos going to be in our group. I wonder what shes like?
5 August Mama took my ration, went to the canteen for dinner and called
the doctor. We didnt have to wait long. Soon the doctor came but she couldnt tell
what was wrong with me, and went away, saying it was either typhus or colitis1. She
told me to eat nothing but rusks, but Im eating everything I can for now, bread and
herring, its all right.
6 August. At six the ambulance came and I was taken to hospital on the Obvodnoy
Canal, the same hospital I was in when I had scarlet fever. In the isolation ward they cut
off all my hair (shaved my head), washed me and then took me into the ward. Its a big
ward for fifty-two people. So far Ive no idea whats going on. Im going to go to sleep
9 August. I can't wait for the 10th. Tomorrow Im going home.
12 August. In the morning, as soon as Tanya and Mama had gone out, I got up,
had something to eat and went out looking for firewood. Found nothing and came
back dead on my feet. Then I went off to the canteen. When Id finished eating I
wasnt hungry but I wasnt satisfied, either. Still, I bought four litres of sweetened
water. When I got home I made some soup and suddenly heard Dina calling out to
me through the window. I stuck out my head, she was asking me if I wanted to go
to the cinema. Well of course I couldnt say no to that, so I dropped everything and
rushed out as fast as I could, we were almost late. We got tickets for the six oclock
film, Alexander Parkhomenko2, not bad When I got back, Mama was here and
very angry. It turned out a lot of soya had gone missing. Tanya said shed lost a piece
of sausage too, but shes lying. She wont admit she polished it off herself.
13 August Tomorrow Im going to buy sandals; I can get them without a
ration card. We had a great supper today, only we ate quite late, around eleven in the
evening. Soup with rice and fish dumplings and then stuffed cabbage leaves with rice
and mushrooms. It didnt matter that it was late. We didnt pass up the chance.
14 August Tanya is a fibber, I needed a card after all for the sandals, so I couldnt
get any. On the way out of the shop I called Tanya every name under the sun. She just
drives me mad
1
A form of epidemic typhus began to spread in Leningrad during the siege owing to body lice.
2
A wartime film directed by Leonid Lukov about a Bolshevik Civil War hero fighting Makhnos anarchist forces in the
Ukraine.
 129

work, though actually we were just mucking around. Yurka is crazy about Ira, I thought
he would kiss her out in the field. Pavlik is always getting in a mood about something or
other. After lunch we went out to work again, but I felt awful and Ira let me go home.
After dinner I went out with the girls to look for berries but we didnt find a damn thing
it was dark and cold. We saw a parachute probably a German one. At ten in the
evening we went to the hostel to dance with the boys. We took the gramophone down
there. As soon as we started dancing, the house manager came in. We felt awkward and
we went home. German and Pavlik brought back the gramophone late at night. They
also brought a new girl whos going to be in our group. I wonder what shes like?
5 August Mama took my ration, went to the canteen for dinner and called
the doctor. We didnt have to wait long. Soon the doctor came but she couldnt tell
what was wrong with me, and went away, saying it was either typhus or colitis1. She
told me to eat nothing but rusks, but Im eating everything I can for now, bread and
herring, its all right.
6 August. At six the ambulance came and I was taken to hospital on the Obvodnoy
Canal, the same hospital I was in when I had scarlet fever. In the isolation ward they cut
off all my hair (shaved my head), washed me and then took me into the ward. Its a big
ward for fifty-two people. So far Ive no idea whats going on. Im going to go to sleep
9 August. I can't wait for the 10th. Tomorrow Im going home.
12 August. In the morning, as soon as Tanya and Mama had gone out, I got up,
had something to eat and went out looking for firewood. Found nothing and came
back dead on my feet. Then I went off to the canteen. When Id finished eating I
wasnt hungry but I wasnt satisfied, either. Still, I bought four litres of sweetened
water. When I got home I made some soup and suddenly heard Dina calling out to
me through the window. I stuck out my head, she was asking me if I wanted to go
to the cinema. Well of course I couldnt say no to that, so I dropped everything and
rushed out as fast as I could, we were almost late. We got tickets for the six oclock
film, Alexander Parkhomenko2, not bad When I got back, Mama was here and
very angry. It turned out a lot of soya had gone missing. Tanya said shed lost a piece
of sausage too, but shes lying. She wont admit she polished it off herself.
13 August Tomorrow Im going to buy sandals; I can get them without a
ration card. We had a great supper today, only we ate quite late, around eleven in the
evening. Soup with rice and fish dumplings and then stuffed cabbage leaves with rice
and mushrooms. It didnt matter that it was late. We didnt pass up the chance.
14 August Tanya is a fibber, I needed a card after all for the sandals, so I couldnt
get any. On the way out of the shop I called Tanya every name under the sun. She just
drives me mad
1
A form of epidemic typhus began to spread in Leningrad during the siege owing to body lice.
2
A wartime film directed by Leonid Lukov about a Bolshevik Civil War hero fighting Makhnos anarchist forces in the
Ukraine.
 132

Misha Tikhomirov lived in Leningrad with his sister Nina (Ninel, as she is called in
the diary) who was a year younger than him, and his school teacher parents, on Dostoevsky
Street, opposite the building that now houses a museum devoted to the writer. Mishas sister
Nina Vasilevna, who now lives in Budapest after moving there to be with her husband in
1955, recalls, My brother and I had a happy childhood. Our house was a place of peace
and harmony. On Sundays we would go on walks to the Neva or the Zoological Museum,
or sometimes take a trip to Pavlovsk, and in the evenings Father would read us good books:
stories by Vitaly Bianki and Mikhail Prishvin, Arsenevs Dersu Uzala and Dickens Oliver
Twist.
In 2010 the periodical Zvezda published a large part of Misha Tikhomirovs diary. That
same year, at her own expense, Nina Tikhomirova published the diary in its entirety: a slim
volume in an edition of just 300 copies. For Nina, the diary written by her fifteen-year-old
brother is the most valuable of all the souvenirs she has acquired throughout her long life.
Misha Tikhomirov wrote his diary every day from 8 December 1941 to 17 May 1942,
only missing two days on account of illness. 159 days. The last entry was made on the day
before Misha died.
We learned of his death on the 19th of May, Mishas sister Nina wrote to us in an
e-mail from Budapest. On the 18th, there was an intensive artillery bombardment in the
afternoon. Neither Mother nor Misha came back home when they should have. The trams
werent running, the overhead tram wires were broken, and people were having to walk.
In the evening, Mother came back but there was still no sign of Misha. The next morning,
Father went to the school and found out that a shell had exploded right next to where Misha
had been standing, at the tram stop on the corner of International Prospekt and Kiev Street,
and he had been hit in the side of his head by a piece of shrapnel. Mishas favourite teacher,
Lyudmila Nikolaevna Leonchukova, a biologist, gave us a burial plot for him, next to her
familys graves in the old Lutheran cemetery.
Mishas family knew that he was keeping a diary during the siege. But after his death, it
was some time before they looked inside the two notebooks; they avoided anything connected
with Misha, as their memories of him were so recent and painful. Now, their contents can be
seen by all those who read this book.
 133

8 December 1941. Im beginning this diary on the 8th of December 1941, just as
winter is about to set in in earnest. So far, we havent had much snow and the temperature
hasnt dropped below zero, but yesterday, after the fifteenth training session, a hard frost
set in and the temperature dropped to -23. Now its 16, and all day its been snowing
hard. The snow is falling fast, fine and unpleasant, and is covering up the roads, and the
trams arent running. I only had three lessons in school today
As I didnt begin this diary at the beginning of the war, or even at the beginning of a
month, I should write a brief list of everything that has happened to us lately that might
be of interest, and say a bit about what our lives are like now.
Leningrad is surrounded by a blockade, and weve had frequent bombardments
and artillery attacks. Were low on fuel: soon, there wont be enough coal to heat the
school. We are living on a ration of 125 g of bread a day, each month we get about
400 g of grain (each), a few sweets and some butter or oil. Manual workers are slightly
better off. Were having our lessons in the school air-raid shelter as the windows are all
boarded up (because the school was shelled), and its freezing cold in the classrooms.
At home, were all living in the one room (to keep warm). We eat twice a day, morning
and evening. Each meal we have soup (usually thin) with cabbage stalks or something
else. We have cocoa in the morning and coffee in the evening. Until recently we made
fritters and sometimes gruel from oilcake (now its running out). We bought about 5 kg
of carpenters glue. Now we are boiling it up with bayleaf to make meat jelly (one piece
at a time), and eating it with mustard
9 December. Its -15, only a light wind, no snow. The trams arent running after
the heavy snow yesterday. All day, from morning to evening, gunfire has been going
on somewhere in the distance. At school, they gave us all thin soup without taking
our ration cards (they might carry on doing this in future, too). I think it means
something. We dont have electric light in the daytime from ten to five, so its dark for
the last hours the worst time1. Today we brought in all the firewood that would be
easy to steal from the yard. In the afternoon we ate glue, drank hot coffee with bread
and cured pork fat, half a rusk and a biscuit. All in tiny amounts, of course, but all the
same, it was quite a special event. This evening we plan to make mittens. Im going
to bed at eight.
10 December. The weather is still the same. At six in the morning Mother went
out to queue for sweets, but had no luck. When she got back she brought us some good
news. Our forces have retaken Tikhvin. The mood is optimistic. Mother made the first
pair of mittens. Theyre wonderful, roomy and warm. Today we made soup to last two
days from ten potatoes (two pans full), a cup of beans, some noodles and a little tinned
meat. This is the third time weve made potato soup to last two days (it tastes wonderful

1
In St Petersburg at this time of year it is daylight only between approximately10 a.m. and 4 p.m., but it can seem much
darker, particularly in bad weather.
 134

when youre used to eating cabbage). The day after tomorrow well have cabbage again.
We have less than a barrel left. Theres no glue to be found in town. If theres a chance,
well get some more. Its going down a treat for the moment; we eat it with all sorts of
spices and relishes.
The fire is lit. Now well sit in the warm, drink coffee and read aloud. Were feeling
cheerful. Were waiting for the newspaper reports on the battles for Tikhvin. At the
moment, Im only writing my diary when we have electricity, i.e. after five in the
evening.
11 December. More encouraging news. Our troops have taken Yelets. The
Germans have suffered heavy losses: 12,000 dead and wounded, 90 guns, etc. Things
are in quite a mess now in the Pacific Japan is up to all sorts. We only had four
classes today at school because it was so cold. Thats probably how itll be from now
on. The whole family was at home together by two oclock, so we had some tea to
warm ourselves up. We also had a rusk and a biscuit each. Well have our supper later
today. We keep hearing persistent, but probably false rumours that the bread ration is
about to be increased. Theres also talk of evacuations across the ice of Lake Ladoga.
Some people are saying its a distance of 200 km on foot, others that its 250 km. For
the second ten-day period of the month, well be getting a little more butter. If we do,
itll be excellent.
Today Im going to have some mittens made for me.
12 December ... Mother got 800 g of brown spaghetti for the first-ten day period of
the month. We divided it up into ten portions straight away. It works out at almost a
teacupful every day for soup. Weve already made cabbage soup today. Father went off
to the school on night duty. He took two blankets, and put on his newly made warm
padded winter boots, as its bitterly cold in the school. Ill probably get some boots like
that on Wednesday. Now the three of us are sitting reading. Were going to bed soon.
Weve all become horribly thin, and our legs and bodies feel weak all over, especially
after even a short spell sawing logs for the fire or walking. We feel cold and shivery all the
time, and if we get any little scratches and burns they take ages to heal. I try to finish all
my work in school, so I can go to bed earlier
14 December. We slept till eleven. Nothing much happened today. We made
dinner. I finished making my microscope, but havent tried it out yet. In the evening,
I read three chapters of The Sea Wolf1 by the fire. The electricity will go off soon.
For the moment, Im still reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Then Ill
go to bed. Ive saved four (very small) pieces of dried bread, a bit of a rusk and half a
spoonful of melted sugar (I didnt drink any tea because I dont want to get swollen)
and because its Sunday well get some chocolate too. Today I counted how much glue
we had left: thirty-one pieces. Exactly enough for a month.
1
A 1904 novel by Jack London (18761916).
 135

In this photo, Misha is nine years old. Six years later, he began to record the days his family spent in
the siege in his diary. There are 159 entries altogether Misha Tikhomirovs life, and his diary, were
cut short by a piece of shrapnel from an exploding shell.

Before the war, Misha and his sister Nina

would spend every summer in the village
of Krasnye Gory in the Luga District. It was
the happiest time of our lives, recalls Nina
Vasilevna who still has her brothers diary
(the notebooks in which her brother wrote
his diary).
Photo from the archive of N. Tikhomirova.
 136

The number of people dying in the city has increased noticeably. A huge number
of coffins, made of boards roughly nailed together, are being pulled along on sledges.
From time to time you see a body without a coffin, wrapped in a burial sheet.
15 December. For some time now, everyone has been telling me that my face is
swollen. Thats why I want to cut down the amount of water I am drinking as far as I
can. In general, this ailment (swelling) is becoming very common through the city. The
swelling starts in the legs and then spreads to the body. A great many people are dying
from it. As I said before, the death rate is now enormously high. On my way back from
school, I might see ten coffins
19 December. The day before my birthday. This afternoon after school we were hard
at work, sawing and splitting logs and taking them inside. Before we started work, we ate
the last of the rye bread rusks and cured pork fat with some cocoa, to get our strength up.
The work is horribly hard going when your body is exhausted and malnourished. Your
arms tire very quickly. Still, in the end we managed to saw up a lot of firewood. We stacked
the remainder into a tight woodpile and covered it up with boards (to stop thieves).
Soon well have dinner. Thatll be very welcome as were really feeling the hunger
and were so tired our bodies are aching. After that, well light the fire, wash our faces
and hair and our feet and change our underclothes. Mother managed to get a small
piece of oilcake for ten packs of cigarettes (expensive!). Shell make a special birthday
porridge from it and the beans tomorrow. We used up the last (4th) ration coupon
today, to put towards tomorrows feast.
The Germans havent forgotten us. Yesterday there was a short, very intensive
artillery attack, apparently in the Kuybyshev district. And today some other area came
under fire.
20 December. Ill write a bit about my birthday. We havent celebrated it yet. My
birthday meal is being cooked as I write.
In school today we worked really hard, I was clearing snow for two hours, and
Father was helping take down a building to use for firewood in school. Then some
pupils, including me, went out to a factory to get stoves for our teachers and for the
school. The city was very lively. Masses of coffins. On the way we saw a body that had
been left lying in the street All of this is very distressing. We brought five small stoves
back to the school. Then we put one of the stoves, which had been put aside for Father,
onto a sledge and brought it home between the two of us. Mother was delighted: its a
cast-iron, cylindrical stove, weighing about 6065 kilos. We attached the samovar pipe1
to it and got it going. The result was wonderful. The room warmed up straight away.
Mother was lucky today too, she got hold of 1,200 g of bonbons. Theyre very useful
sweets to have as theyre much in demand.

1
An old samovar would be heated using solid fuel (wood or charcoal) and thus had a small pipe or chimney to take away
the smoke. The pipe could be removed in order to place a teapot on top of the samovar to heat up.
 137

21 December. Today was Sunday and we slept until ten in the morning in the lovely
heat from the new stove. Then we heated up some soup on it and ate it. Mother went
out on duty. We got our bread. Weve already cut a little piece off to go towards New
Year celebrations. Its two oclock now, but already getting dark. Theres just been
an intensive artillery assault on the city. The warmer weather must have brought the
Germans out. (Its -2 outside.)
My birthday yesterday was terrific. I got a wonderful present from the whole family,
a sketch book and a tremendous book, The Art of Antiquity and Modern Times, with
wonderful reproductions of the works of the old masters. Then we had dinner two
platefuls of thick cabbage soup, stewed soya beans with noodles (I dont think Ive ever
had anything so delicious!) and coffee. With our coffee we also each got some bread,
a piece of boiled kidney, tinned cod, and honey. And each of us made about ten little
sandwiches and ate them slowly, making the most of them. And then a few sweets from
Mother before bedtime. My body felt satisfied!
We didnt light the fire as the wonderful stove had heated up the room really well
24 December. Im in rather low spirits as I havent heard the news reports yet, and
my whole body is terribly weak, particularly my legs. Were all feeling it. Today I found
out that our drawing teacher died. Hes the second person I know whos died of hunger.
The literature teacher isnt coming into school any more. Father says shell be next.
Many of the teachers are barely able to walk. We might be able to keep going if we were
getting our food ration on time, small though it is, but thats very difficult. Leningrad is
urgently in need of help
25 December. Today Ninel didnt go to school because she had a cough and a head
cold, but mostly because she wanted to save her strength. When we got to school, we
heard some wonderful news: theyve increased the bread ration! Now well be getting
200 g. Its a sign of the way things are going at the front. People are feeling optimistic.
Our good spirits have returned
27 December. I didnt go to school. I split firewood for the stove and then went and
lay down.
Mother got hold of The Lord of the World by Belyaev1 from Tatyana Aleksandrovna.
Its apparently very interesting. Its minus twenty outside. The window panes are
covered in frost patterns. Soon well heat up the hob
There are some interesting prices at the street markets these days: bread at 300
roubles a kilo; rice at 500 roubles and butter at 750 roubles2. All in very small amounts,
of course.
Still, everybody is saying that soon well see a dramatic improvement in the food
situation. Thats the most important thing
1
A science fiction novel by the writer Alexander Belyaev (18841942).
2
To give an impression of what these prices meant in real terms: the monthly salary for a Soviet librarian in 1942 was 300
roubles, for specialists, technical and manual workers closer to 600700 roubles.
 138

31 December. Father came back from duty with wonderful news: Soviet forces have
landed in the Crimea and taken Kerch and Feodosia. The Crimea will be purged of the
German scum at the order of Comrade Stalin! Today were celebrating New Years
Eve. In the evening well have a feast (as far as were able, of course). Before then, Ill
fix the brass lamp bracket over the table (under the old one) so we can have the light
from two lamps
4 January 1942. We still dont have our food rations. Yesterday Mother got 400 g
of rye flour (made from oilcake). She added a cupful to the soup. We tried it today.
It gives a bit of taste, but nothing more. Were already adding cabbage just for the taste
less than a cupful. Today Mother made fritters from some of the flour shes got with
coffee grounds, and in the evening she made some thin gruel. All these things seem
quite delicious.
Ninel is out of danger with her stomach trouble, so it seems. But Father is complaining
of weak legs. Generally speaking, the city is dying. The death rate is immense; theres
no light, no water, the trams arent running, the streets are covered with snow that isnt
being cleared at all. The city needs urgent help
7 January 1942. We went to the theatre just before eleven. The electric light was
working, so the New Year party went ahead. We watched A Nest of Gentlefolk in
the freezing cold. It was badly acted, and all the actors were in coats, fur coats and
felt boots. Then it was time for dinner. When people were allowed into the dining
room there was pushing and shoving, it was absolute chaos. Dinner was a tiny bowl
of soup, 50 g of bread, a thin rissole with a millet garnish and a little jelly. We
brought back our bread and rissoles for a feast at home: were having gruel from the
rye flour
8 January 1942. In the evening Mother got hold of the remaining parts of Yurys
doctors miscroscope (the eyepiece tube and stand) for me, as I had asked. Yury is
obviously not interested in the microscope any more, and so I'm going to try to put
the parts to use. I attached the tube to the lens and eyepiece from my own goat the
resulting contraption is more or less fit for use. His microscope isnt like the ones we
have here nowadays. It was made in London, I think.
When Father got back from school (we stayed at home, as they extended the
holidays till the 15th, which is excellent) he brought back some sad news. Vladimir
Petrovich Shakhin and one other teacher have died of malnutrition. All this makes us
feel very gloomy indeed; meanwhile more and more coffins are being pulled through
the city, a huge number Fathers legs are still no better. My legs feel weak, too. If only
things would get better soon! But theres no encouraging news from the front.
9 January 1942. A hard frost again; no warmer than yesterday. I stayed all day at
home again. Father bought 4 kg of flour (some molasses by-product) for 25 roubles a
kilo from someone at the school. Ive already mentioned what the flour is like, and
 139

described our experiments with it and what we think of it. But now weve become a great
deal more positive about it, thanks to an article I found in the encyclopedia; the article
said that when you make molasses, there is a certain amount of glucose produced, and
this is meant to be a good source of sustenance. Also, we can exchange the flour for
other products at the street market. If you make up a mess of this flour and add a bit of
sugar, you get something that resembles a thick jam. We all like it except Ninel. It goes
down very well with tea, coffee and so on. Im also eating it raw.
There have been changes in the city. Baron Klodts horses have been taken down
from the bridge over the Fontanka1; there is a house nearby that has been damaged top
to bottom by a bomb. People are walking about the city like shades; most of them can
barely drag themselves along. On the main roads to the cemeteries there are masses
of coffins and bodies without coffins. Its not unusual now to see bodies lying around in
the streets, usually without their hats or shoes
It will be difficult to get through this month, but we have to stay strong, and not give
up hope
13 January 1942 I cant use the microscope yet, as it's too dark, and the mirror
doesn't reflect enough light onto the specimen as it doesnt have a large enough
diameter. (Its a dentists mirror, without the handle, which Ive attached.) Today was
a very good day, except that Mother and Father had a bit of a quarrel. I think they were
both in the wrong.
16 January. A day full of events. In the afternoon, Alik Portyaki arrived out of the
blue. I hadnt seen him for about three months. Hes a true friend! He brought me about
a litre of sweet soya milk. Hes receiving the higher level of rations now, and so is his
mother, who is a doctor2. Hes been getting soya milk all this time. We took the edge off
our hunger with some cocoa made with the milk, and in the evening we added a couple
of spoonfuls to our coffee. Its heavenly stuff unimaginably, indescribably delicious!
Mother will try to exchange half a litre tomorrow for bread. If she doesnt get a good
exchange, well hang on to it ourselves. Then, in the evening there was another event:
a letter came from the headmaster of the school saying that Fathers going to be taken
to the infirmary at School No. 11 for intensive feeding and to restore his strength. We
dont yet know if its been organised by the school or the Regional Party Committee.
In any case, its very good news. Father has been complaining recently of feeling weak,
and weve been very worried about him. Hell have a chance to rest in the infirmary.
Well get all his things ready today.
Were not going back to school yet, but Ninel is going in to get our soup. When she
goes in tomorrow she should get Fathers ration cards back (we had to give them in to

1
The Horse Tamers a bronze sculpture by Baron Peter Klodt von Jurgensburg, was taken down from the Anichkov
Bridge and buried in the Anichkov Palace garden, to prevent damage from bombing and artillery fire.
2
Workers were classed by category according to their importance, which affected the amount of rations they received.
 140

get him admitted). If they dont take them away, well have things easier while hes in
the infirmary1.
17 January 1942. A very busy day. In the morning we took Father to the infirmary.
Mother walked in to school. Ninel went to get our dinners instead of Father. She got
six portions of soup, went to see Father, took him his ration cards (they did take them
after all!). He seems to be settling in well. Hell tell us more later. It looks as if hell be
in for one or two weeks.
In the evening the three of us made soup. Sonya came in to get warm, we heated her
up some water, tomorrow well her give a little firewood. To thank us she gave us a cup
of wheat from the mill, a piece of dough (which Mother will make into porridge) and
a large flatbread shed made herself. In the evening we finished the milk, dipping our
bread into it. It was delicious.
Tomorrow well get up at six, as theyre giving out grain at the Trade and Produce
Department.
18 January. We got up at ten oclock, instead of at six, and it was a good thing, too.
In the morning there was a queue for grain (they were giving out buckwheat and pearl
barley) but in the afternoon Mother managed to get our 600 g without any trouble at all.
We got both sorts a mixture. Tomorrow well make porridge out of the food Sonya
brought us yesterday and write a letter to Father. Tomorrow, Ninel will go to school
just to get dinner and then go to Father, as Mother has to go to register our ration cards
again. As far as school goes, this is how I see it: while Father isnt at home and Mother
is going in to school, I need to bring in water, and help her cut firewood. If we start
going to school its going to be hard to get our soup, for all sorts of different reasons,
and the classes are all over the place. Tomorrow Ninel is going to ask Father again if we
should go or not. But I think its all too complicated
23 January 1942. Last night, Vladimir Nikolaevich Komarov died. Tanya came
running in the evening to tell us he was in a very bad way. Mother sat with her until
midnight and then they went to bed. Father had been predicting that he would die for
some time; he was far too thin Tanya kept going until mid-afternoon, then she broke
down and cried She has had to go through a lot.
We got another cupful of millet from Yekaterina Ivanovna in exchange for half a
cup of fortified wine. Her daughter has a bad stomach.
Ninel has a cough. In the evenings, we do our best to try to make her better: we give
her strong coffee, a spoonful of honey and some fortified wine. Then we wrap her up
warmly and she goes to sleep
1 February 1942. Its February! The new month has come in with a hard frost
minus fifteen. February already! What will this month bring? Everyone we know has

1
From September 1941 stricter rules on rationing were introduced by the Leningrad authorities; patients staying in
hospital were required to surrender their ration cards as they were fed in hospital.
 141

In May 1942, Misha celebrated his sister Ninels birthday for the last time. A day later he died.

One of Mishas fascinations

in those hungry days was a
microscope, which he himself
was able to make out of spare
parts. He had a passion for
biology, which helped him to
keep going during the siege.
Photo from the archive
of N. Tikhomirova.
 142

been talking more and more about evacuation, and its true, we all want to get out of
Leningrad. Physically Ive wasted away, lost all my strength. Were tired, emaciated
and hungry beyond belief, and essentially, nothing is getting any better. Tomorrow
were going to start going to school. Im going to go in every day and Ninel every other
day. Well be having three or four classes. To tell the truth, I dont feel like studying at
all at the moment (Im so weak generally that my brain doesnt want to work properly
and I cant concentrate). But I need to study.
Its good thing that for the moment the advance towards Pskov and beyond is going
well for our army In recent days theres been a lot of gunfire around the city and
heavy bombardment of the outlying areas. Lets hope that all the Germans around the
city will be wiped out, and then at last well be able to breathe freely
3 February 1942.The temperature dropped again this morning to minus eighteen.
If only it would get warmer! Ninel and I didnt go to school today: we were out on the
search for meat from early in the morning. After queuing until half past eleven, we got
hold of 950 g of good meat. We didnt get any grain for the moment. Bad news: our
troops have had to abandon Feodosia. Its a blow, whichever way you look at it
Were in rather low spirits, too. Father has an upset stomach and its making him
feel terribly weak. Were very worried about it.
There are rumours of cannibalism: attacks on women and children, and people
eating dead bodies. These rumours are coming from more than one source, so I guess
we should take them as fact. Another thing, we managed to get a childs ration card for
Ninel by mistake for February. Its a great help
11 February 1942. Twelve degrees below; we had a bit of a snowstorm this morning
but the sun came out by mid-afternoon and it got brighter. I was the only one who went
to school today. Father didnt have any classes.
Today was a day of good news; first, the bread ration has been increased, so now
every day we are getting 300 g more bread (non-manual workers get 400 g, dependants
get 300 g, children 300 g and manual workers 500 g). Second, according to the news
reports, our forces have destroyed a key point of the Leningrad blockade. Unfortunately,
theres no more information. Where might it be?
Lately, along with our meagre afternoon nibble, a new tradition has entered our
lives: rest hour. Its a way to conserve energy. Its quite amazing how accustomed
weve become to doing without things like light, water, or lavatories, so that weve even
stopped noticing we dont have them. We use night lights, and we dont even light the
lamp very often, to save on paraffin.
It seems there have been some attempts, lately, to introduce order in the city. At
the street market, which has grown to enormous proportions over the last month,
policemen and some mounted policemen are busy at work, forcing people to clean up
slops and waste which have been thrown out onto the street.
 143

Evacuation now seems to be taking place in earnest. In the morning, you can often
see sledges loaded with possessions making their way toward the Finland Station, from
where the special trains are leaving for Lake Ladoga. As for us, were not enthusiastic
about the idea. People say things are bad all over, and in any case, weve started to hope
that things will get better in Leningrad.
P.S. Tatyana Aleksandrovna has had a letter from some relatives who have been
evacuated out to Tashkent. They write that things arent easy at all out there. Its hard
to find work, food is in short supply and wages are low
13 February 1942 Weve been given wheat and weve been told theyll be giving
out sugar (950 g altogether). Tomorrow we should get meat and butter.
A curious incident happened that shows just how valuable water has become and
how hard it is to come by. The owner of an apartment in Volkova village which had
caught fire went running out onto the stairs just as a woman was coming up with two
buckets of water. No matter how much the owner of the apartment begged and pleaded,
the woman wouldnt give her the water. As a result, the building burned down
A great many of the deaths in the city are down to the fact that some families cant
or dont know how to plan in order to make food last. For instance, some people eat
all their bread as soon as they get it in the morning. And they do the same with other
food. Many of the people who eat in canteens take several dishes, use up all their ration
cards in the first days, and then become swollen from hunger. But as far as our familys
concerned, all this is taken care of. Weve got it all planned out from beginning to end
19 February 1942. Ninel and I went in to school. Father was the only one who
stayed at home; Mother went off to her school too. She told us shed be coming back
late, so the three of us decided to have our nibble together. No sooner had the samovar
boiled, when the door suddenly opened and there stood Borya himself !!! Large as life,
in a Red Army uniform. We all rushed to him. We were almost crying with joy. We all
sat round the samovar and Borya got out some butter, bread, rusks and condensed milk.
We drank tea and talked and talked. And we ate too, of course, far better than usual.
Mother came back She was overcome with joy and excitement and burst out
crying; looking at the two of them together, we couldnt help crying either
It turns out that Borya didnt know about the terrible situation in Leningrad until
a few days ago. As soon as he found out, he bought some food and tried to get away for
a few days as quickly as possible, so that he could come here. He had huge problems
getting through to us, and he didnt know whether we were still alive, or whether our
building was still standing. Were all hugely excited by this amazing, unbelievably joyful
reunion. Even now I can't believe that Borya is here!
My head is spinning with a mass of chaotic thoughts. Ill try to sort them out and
write them down later, but I cant write anything just now. For the time being Ill be
brief: Borya brought us three big loaves of bread, a few rusks, some tinned food, butter,
 14 4

a tin of condensed milk, spaghetti and some concentrated food. All this has come at just
the right time for us. This evening well have a real feast
25 February 1942 Borya went away on the 23rd. It was very hard saying goodbye.
Who knows if well ever see one another again?
During this time they have announced, and issued, more cereals, 100 g each of
butter, 25 g of cocoa (children and manual workers are getting chocolate), a quarter of
a litre of paraffin. As you can see, its been a busy time!
Today mother came home for our ritual nibble. She is looking a little better, shes
being quite well fed there, the situation is quite good as far as sugar and butter are
concerned; were getting 50 g of each per day
28 February 1942. Im at home, guarding the house and so on. My legs are weak,
and my body feels listless. Father, in particular, is complaining of weakness. He says his
legs are worse than ever. I wonder whats causing it?
There was a brief artillery attack today; some shells fell very close by.
Today Mother came out of hospital. Shes feeling better, though her legs are still
weak. Thats understandable: she wasnt kept in for long enough or fed enough, given
the state were all in. During the attack, several shells fell near the hospital and Mother
brought home a couple of large pieces of shrapnel.
For the last few days, weve been reading aloud stories by Oscar Wilde, and each
reading him on our own as well. Father bought a book of his best-known works at the
street market.
The daily portion of bread (and everything else) is now horribly small again and I
have a shocking appetite. Yet again, were dreaming of an increase in the ration.
1 March 1942 We devoted the day to cleaning. The soot, dirt and mess in the
house is terrible. In the evening, Mother got some meat (the last ration given out for
February); we ate it raw, on small pieces of bread it was delicious. It makes you feel
like a wolf.
Our legs are still weak, though lately weve been eating porridge made of various
grains. Even though its thin, its still porridge. Maybe were crazy to think that food
like this is filling enough to make up for everything our bodies have gone through.
Boris, for example, kept saying: this isnt food and it wont get you back into shape,
you need to just get out of here as quick as you can; food like that will only get you so
far, and you wont be able to live through another siege. Well, that last statement is
certainly true
5 March 1942. March is here. Minus twenty-five outside, but a clear sky and
wonderful sunshine Im making full use of the sun coming into our room, examining
protozoa from a hay infusion which I allowed to decay.
15 March 1942. Its Sunday today. Were half way through March, but still the
same blasted frost minus twenty-five, Mother went to the Baltic Station to get white
 14 5

bread (theyre only giving it out to people with stomach problems, but luckily Mother
managed to buy a certificate for 25 roubles that allowed her to get it). When she got
back she exchanged the 800 g (two-day ration) of white bread for 1,600 g of black bread.
Excellent! Father went to a voluntary Sunday work session1, they were breaking up the
ice near the school, at least he was fed. Tomorrow, Father is being taken into the city
hospital; so once again, Ill be the main firewood cutter, water carrier etc. at home
19 March 1942. Its slightly warmer today. The sun, sky and air are wonderful.
Mother and I are sitting at home relaxing. Today they announced that butter would be
given out to everybody except dependants like us. Thats good. Father will probably
start getting butter too.
Theres been a tragedy in our apartment2: Praskovya Ivanovnas husband,
Konstantin Alekseich has frozen to death. He went out to a bathhouse in the back end
of nowhere; late at night, he sent a man back with the message that he had collapsed
and couldnt get up. His wife (what can you say about somebody like that?!) was afraid
to go out with a sledge to find him on her own and yet she said nothing to anybody. So
this was the result. It was almost murder
20 March 1942. The latest news in the city a mass clear-up of snow from all the
yards has been going on. For instance, now, by the Obvodnoy Canal, on the bridge,
there are always trucks and sledges loaded with crates, dumping great piles of snow
over the railing. For days on end, you hear the drone of aircraft and see planes flying
overhead, lots of them. Every so often, there is a terrible burst of fire from the anti-
aircraft guns, when an enemy plane appears over the city. Apparently the whole of
Uritsky Square3 has been ploughed up by shells, and quite a large section of the Gostiny
Dvor has burnt down.
Our housing manager got to work. Now our yard has been cleared up a little, and a
pipe has been put into the wall; the water is running.
The street market has grown out of all proportion. You can find all sorts of valuable
things for sale there now. Beautiful china and all sorts.
21 March 1942. From morning onwards I was cleaning up, as it is Mothers birthday
today! Mother and Ninel are in school, Mother has gone in to get white bread and
Ninel to get dinner. Just before three, we had some soup, and Father was home by four
and we heated up the samovar and had a special birthday nibble. We gave Mother a
marvellous teacup, which Father bought at the market. We had black and white bread
(weve been saving it up for several days), carp in tomato sauce (a gift from Borya),

1
In the Soviet era it was common for working people to be sent on voluntary work sessions on Saturday and Sunday
(subbotniki and voskresniki) to carry out community work.
2
From this story, it is clear that Mishas family live in a communal apartment, though up until now we have not heard
about the other tenants.
3
Palace Square, the central square next to the Winter Palace, site of the Alexander Column, bore the name Uritsky
Square from1919 to 1944, in memory of the local leader of the Cheka (the Bolshevik secret police), Moisey Uritsky,
assassinated in 1919.
 146

evaporated milk, sugar and real coffee. We made a good meal of it, and had a chance to
forget our worries.
Today they announced that sugar and cereals would be given out at the previous
rate. Well try to get both tomorrow.
Recently, bombardments have become more frequent. Several parts of the city
are being shelled. But everybody is very calm, either because theyre used to it, or
because they think its nothing compared to what theyve already gone through. The
news reports are heartening, Fedunins forces are pushing the Germans back, theyve
advanced several kilometres; but we havent heard anything specific
28 March 1942. A beautiful sunny day, despite the brutal, unseasonable temperature
(minus fourteen). Mother and Father went in to school; Father to an end-of-term
meeting. After Id done all the chores for the day I went out to have a rummage at the
market (where you can find all sorts of interesting things). I watched a German plane
racing overhead, letting out a trail of white smoke. The anti-aircraft guns laid into it
relentlessly but not very accurately, so to no effect.
Father and I got back almost at the same time, and Father sent me straight off to
school, as it turned out nobody had come in that morning to help clean up the school
(I should say, theyve issued a decree mobilising all members of the population over
fifteen to help clean up the city). I got in to school late but I made the excuse that I had
been enlisted by the housing cooperative for clearing snow, so I didnt get a row. Now
Ill be sent out to work for two hours a day by the school (until 8 April).
Because of the meeting, we got a microscopic portion of millet porridge in addition
to our soup. We got four portions of porridge. They went down a treat at our afternoon
nibble.
29 March 1942. Today the weather was beautiful again, exactly like yesterday. We
spent the morning on a successful hunt for butter; we got 1.05 kg altogether, including
the new, extra ration (for everybody except dependants). We havent had so much
butter for a long time! All that was left of our ration card was the stub, wed managed to
use up all the coupons. That hasnt happened for months.
The whole city is hard at work cleaning up. There are crowds of people on the streets
with crowbars, shovels and pickaxes. The sun is helping things along no end. Police are
detaining anyone they find trying to evade their civic duty (for instance, they cordoned
off the market and began to check everyones documents)
German planes have been flying out over the city; weve seen them several times. As
usual, the anti-aircraft guns have been blasting madly away at them to no effect.
P.S. I had an unusual awakening today; I woke to a thundering crash, followed by
the sound of broken glass. Clearly a shell had come down somewhere nearby. I looked
for it but didnt find any trace of it I can hear the banging of the anti-aircraft guns
again. Ill stick my nose out and have a look
 147

2 April 1942. It looks just like winter outside: a grey sky, heavy snow since morning,
minus 5. After our classes, we worked outside, pointlessly, in my opinion, as snow kept
falling and settling on any area we had cleared. After the snow duty of these last few
days, my hands and feet are quite feeble from working with the crowbar and now they
are refusing to work. We have a new subject now at school called Chemical Defence.
Theyre stressing that its quite possible, in the very near future, that the Germans will
hit us with chemical surprises. Its the subject of half the front-page editorials in the
newspapers
9 April 1942. A dull morning, but the temperatures above freezing. Mid-afternoon,
the sun came out and everything began to thaw like mad, now the streets are all flooded.
Just as we feared, theyve extended the obligatory public work to the 15th, but we didnt
do any clear-up work at school today. The city clear-up over the last few days has
achieved very little. One sunny day does more to get rid of the snow than the entire
population of the city. Doubtless theyll make us do all sorts of work now, in whatever
way they can, throughout spring and summer. Once the snow has gone, therell be earth
to dig and allotments to plant, etc.
A heavenly nibble today Mother got hold of some herring (four fish plus a tail)
and a new ration of butter (600 g). The herring are heavenly big, oily and fat with
heavenly roe, too
12 April 1942. Today was just like a proper spring day. It was warm, and everything
was thawing like mad. There was a warm breeze and all sorts of smells in the air, many
of which brought back good memories.
When the needlework teacher was due to arrive I went for a walk on Nevsky Prospekt.
The snow had almost gone, and the street had dried out and was looking quite busy. On
the sunny side of the street haggard city-dwellers had come out with newspapers and
books and were sitting on every available ledge, warming themselves in the sun.
These last days, everythings been quiet over the city. We havent had any air raids
or shelling. The reports from the State Information Bureau say nothing and explain
nothing. At the moment, we often find ourselves trying to guess the future, to make
plans, when we are completely and utterly in the dark.
13 April 1942. A slight frost this morning, but then beautifully clear skies, and
glorious sunshine. Almost all the snow in the school yard has melted. We went out and
dug about a bit, it was only for show. My legs are in a bad way. There are rumours that
people are no longer being evacuated, and that certain categories of citizen are about to
be evicted from the city (black marketeers, evacuees etc.)1
20 April 1942. We went to the District Party Council for 10 oclock to find out how
things stand with us. I took the tram there and back, so didnt get too tired and was back

1
i.e., those who had been evacuated from German-occupied areas (such as the Baltic states) into Leningrad before the
beginning of the siege.
 148

early. I found out that Im to go for a medical at Clinic No. 18 tomorrow at ten in the
morning, and then back to the District Party Council, this time to get my permit for
technical school, taking my ration cards with me.
Now I am waiting for Father and Ninel to come back from school. Im sitting and
thinking. Ive decided to take advantage of the spare time and the peace and quiet at
home, and write an entry in my diary for this day, when a new chapter of my life is
about to begin. I feel a little sad. Perhaps its because of the beautiful weather, the rooks
gathering nesting material from the trees by the church, and the butterfly (a Mourning
Cloak1, I think, it looks big and black) the first of the year! that just fluttered along
the street. At first glance it all looks joyful and spring-like. But the war and the siege
these two words explain everything. Everything spring-like is out of reach.
And on the other hand, it feels as if Im leaving my family behind, somehow; now
it looks as if Ill only be coming home to sleep. I suppose the school will train us up
quickly and churn out as many electricians and welders as are needed, and send us off
to work. Therell be a lot of work in the city for people with that training
15 May 1942. Its quite clear, and warm, the grass is beginning to come up and the
leaves are coming out. Nothing new in college, but classes seem a bit lethargic.
Its Ninels birthday tomorrow. Were going to have a nibble that promises to be
terrific. Weve been saving up bread.
The array of goods on sale at the street market is becoming more lavish. People are
preparing to evacuate and selling all their possessions
17 May 1942 Sunday. The weather was quite summery today: plus fifteen. It was
hot inside the trams. Our nibble yesterday was terrific. I ate until I was stuffed (Im
glad we saved up all that food!).
At school they gave us our dinner and supper together, at one in the afternoon, so
I came home early. I dont know what well do. Maybe if Ninel gets back early we can
go to the cinema.
I think all the time about how things used to be, about all the things that would be
happening again, now, if it wasnt for this war. And its not surprising. The grass has
already grown up high, soon the leaves will be out (they are already on the bushes) and
the weather! But Im at college from morning till night and the others are all staying
back late at school to get food.
Yet again, I feel like running away from this heroically awful city, this city of which
I am so heartily sick Leningrad.

1
Traurnaya babochka, i.e., the Camberwell Beauty, known in N. America as Mourning Cloak.
 150

In the middle of the last century, Valentin Verkhovtsev, an inhabitant of Arkhangelsk,

was given a notebook of forty-eight pages without a cover the siege diary of a student at
the Leningrad Institute of Engineering and Construction, Marusya Yeryomina. He kept
the diary safe to the present day, and when he heard of the appeal by Argumenty i fakty he
passed on the notebook to the newspapers editors. Verkhovtsev worked all his life in the
road-building industry, but took up writing after his retirement. He made use of this diary,
written by a girl he never knew, in one of his books. What I read in the diary staggered
me, he said. Everything Id known about the siege up until then paled in comparison to
Marusyas words.
Will I ever see my home? asks Marusya. Will I ever get back to my native village? All
the time she was living in Leningrad, Marusya Yeryomina had her own idea of heaven: the
village of Sosnovka, which she had left in order to come and study in the northern capital.
Sosnovka was her sanctuary, the place for which she pined, and to which her thoughts
constantly returned. We know that Marusya did, in fact, see her native village again thanks
to Tamara Knutova (it was Tanya who discovered the diary in the room Marusya had
rented in the Knutov familys apartment, and who later sent it to her old college friend,
Valentin Verkhovtsev). Tamara heard from Marusya herself that in January 1942 (one
month after the diary breaks off) her college was evacuated to Tomsk. Marusya, however,
decided not to go to Tomsk but back to her beloved Sosnovka. She graduated from teacher
training college and worked as a teacher at the school. Neither we, nor Tamara Knutova,
nor Valentin Verkhovtsev have any idea where Marusya is now.
 151

Leningrad, 20 October 1941. Saturday. At six in the morning, when we were still in
bed, we suddenly heard desperate heart-rending shrieks. It was Auntie Shura Frolova,
who lives two rooms along from us, crying hysterically. This morning, someone pinched
all her food ration cards, and she has three or four children to feed, as well as her mother,
her husband and herself. One of the children is still a tiny baby, and now theyre all
left with nothing, and she hadnt used up her vouchers for the last twenty days. The
family were all swollen with hunger as it was; now what will they do? Ration cards are
everything these days, even though they dont guarantee you anything, because theres
nothing in the shops. But at least you still get your 125 grams of bread, and you get
that every day. Its hard to sleep at night. I keep waking up and lying there, waiting for
morning, when at least I can go out, get some bread and have a bite to eat. Tanya D.
went to get bread this morning, Tanya and I heated up cabbage soup on the Primus, and
Tanya heated up coffee, and we had a bit of breakfast. I ate so much salt with my 125 g
of bread that I ended up guzzling water from the tap in Technical Mechanics, although
I know its the worst thing for you. The college isnt heated at the moment, my hands
are numb, but Im still sitting here scribbling in my diary
25 October, 1941. We went to bed late, listened to the latest news and only fell
sleep after the Internationale1. In the evening, Yu. P. came to see Tanyas friend
Tosya. Tosya brought sugar, I lit the Primus in the kitchen and made some tea, and
we sat drinking tea till late. In the morning Tanya got up early, at five oclock, and
went with our neighbour to queue for pork. The meat ration for this ten-day period is
250 g. Somehow or other, Tanya managed to get 500 g of pork; then she went off to
work. I got up at seven, listened to the latest news, and went to college. I arrived at 8.40
and went up to the first floor, where we were having a class on Hydraulics in Lecture
Theatre 7. The girls were sitting and waiting for Beldyug, the teacher. I went up to them
and said hello. For some reason, my heart was pounding. Suddenly, Ida Podosenova
said to me: Dance! (Thats what we say to each other when we get a letter.) A letter?
I asked, a bit nonplussed. For me? From my father? (All the girls recognise Papas
handwriting) Yes, said Ida, from your father. Take it. I took it like some precious
treasure and didnt open it straight away. Later, I went into the Geodesy classroom and
read the long-awaited letter from beginning to end. My family are asking me to come
home. While I was delighted at this, somehow, deep down, I felt a little hurt. Theyre
inviting me to go back when theres no possible way out of here, and when the city of
Leningrad is so completely surrounded that its doomed to a terrible famine. I have
no hope of seeing my loved ones again, as even if I escape being killed by a bomb, Ill
almost certainly die of hunger. Classes were over by three oclock in the afternoon, and
Valya Kashina and I went to Decembrists Street to see Vera Fyodorova. Vera wasnt

1
At this point, the communist anthem the Internationale was still the national anthem of the Soviet Union and as such
would be played at the end of the days radio broadcasts.
 152

at home, so we came back again. I left Valya at the No. 15 tram stop and hurried off
to Trade Union Boulevard to see Tanya. No sooner had I left Theatre Square than
there was a deafening whistle, followed soon after by an explosion. A shell had fallen
in the square opposite the Leningrad Conservatoire. Shortly afterwards, another shell
dropped. People took refuge in doorways. I made a dash for it and managed get to
Tanyas. I opened the door, went in and sat down to read Smoke by Turgenev. The
windows were shaking from the blasts. Shortly after, Tanya came back, and I lit the
Primus and began to boil up some water. Tanya went to the shop and got some bread.
We ate our ration for the day with coconut oil, drank tea, sat arguing for a while about
the state of things in the city. After listening to the latest news report at 9.30, we fell into
a restless, anxious sleep.
26 October. Today was Sunday, and there were no classes at college, but I was
on twenty-four hour duty with the fire crew. I wrote a letter home today, and sent it
by registered post. I didnt study at all, instead I spent the time knitting, darning and
fortune-telling with the other girls, using a pack of cards. We all fantasised about going
home, eating our fill, and having as much bread as we could eat. We talked about the
past and about nice food, we argued about politics and bemoaned our present situation,
from which now there is clearly no way out. They gave us soup with carrot and potato;
it was far too salty.
27 October 27 1941. Im in a rotten mood, very upset about home. Its so awful to
be torn away from my loved ones for ever. The Germans are trying with all their might
to take the city. Now theyre no longer advancing; theyve dug themselves in at the city
gates and are refusing to budge, its as if they want to starve us into submission. Weve
had a bit of a break from all the air raids; none for five days now. I slept badly, I kept
thinking of home, because Tamara Yakovleva told me yesterday that when she was on
duty she heard some soldiers who came by saying that soon elderly women and children
would be evacuated. I was beside myself with joy, but it only lasted till morning. I woke
up early and heard that the city of Stalino1 had surrendered, everyone is surrendering,
Leningrad is still surrounded and soon it will be taken too. And here I am left here,
swaying in the wind like a blade of grass in a field, with nowhere to lay my head. Im
glad, at least, that Tanya is here; its jollier with the two of us. She sometimes talks me
round till I start believing Ill go back home one day and see all my loved ones again,
and even that theyll soon be sick of me. But I know shes just trying to make me
feel better, the Germans wont wait till we get out of here, theyll start pillaging and
destroying the city and torturing innocent people, just like they have in the parts of the
Leningrad Region theyve captured. There was a lot of snow today. I hope the cold
weather will be here soon, at least; perhaps that will be a blow to the Germans, and

1
The city of Donetsk in the Ukraine was named Stalino from 1929 until 1961. Stalino was taken by the Italian army and
occupied by the Germans between 1941 and 1943.
 153

Volkovo Cemetery, 1942. Thousands of people died in the Siege of Leningrad. In many cases, there was
nobody left to bury them, so their bodies were sent to the mass graves. Most of those who died in the city were
buried in the Piskaryov Cemetery (approximately 500,000 people), but there are siege graves in almost every
cemetery in the city. Some of the dead were burned in crematoria.

Not only food and warmth, but water also was scarce in the besieged city. Already weak with hunger, city-
dwellers would set off to bring mains water from manholes or go to the Neva.
TASS.
 154

it might open a route out of the city, so I can go home. Even dying is better at home,
though it now it looks as if that will never be more than a dream.
Im in a class on Theoretical Mechanics. Grigory Ivanovich called me out to the
front of the class to solve a problem, but my thoughts were not on problems. As I stood
there at the blackboard, I almost began to cry, thinking of how Id never see my home
again. I often remember Nyura Sharychenkova. I expect she remembers me too. I
would love to see her and have a heart-to-heart talk. More than anything else, I long to
eat pancakes and home-made bread.
3 November, 1941. Ive been dreaming of Grandma every night. Shes probably
thinking about me back home. Weve been hearing constant artillery fire all night. The
city has become a battle front. For now, nobody can think about life, with death at
every step. Shells come flying out of the sky and kill people on the spot. Today there
were two air raids. Im considering enrolling in the River College. Tanya says I should
go there, but the girls say its really scary out there by the factories1. The situation is
dreadful. The holiday is coming up, but theres nothing to celebrate for us, here in the
city2. It looks like that swine Adolf Hitler will be treating us to some special surprises
on the day of the holiday. Tanya hasnt been given her new ration cards. Today we
had a test in Construction Materials, and I got a three3. I managed to get through
Theoretical Mechanics all right, and didnt have to answer any questions in Electrical
Engineering. I got some food at the cafe: a bowl of borshch, and 25 g of macaroni. I
got bread for tomorrow. In the evening, Tanya and I drank tea with sweets. Nothing
can take the place of bread now, not chocolate, not even gold. The bread is bad, but we
eat it as if it were something It may be like a lump of manure4 but I try not to drop a
single crumb. What I wouldnt give now to be back in my village and have a good meal
of bread and soup, with pumpkin, beetroot, potato things which are no more than a
memory and a dream these days, and likely to stay that way. How I wish I could live out
these years at home, but no, it looks as if Im doomed to die in the ruins of Leningrad
without ever seeing my loved ones again. I see death at every step, at every minute. Dear
God, will it never end? I suppose the end will come when we all meet our end. But its
so sad that Ill never see my village or my family ever again.
12 November 1941. Dear God! Its a real famine now, people are beginning to swell
up. Over the next few days, the people of Leningrad are facing the prospect of dying
of starvation. Today, they wouldnt give out any bread for tomorrow; theyre probably
about to reduce the ration and all the bread for today was given out yesterday. So today,

1
The Leningrad River College, now the St Petersburg College of Water Transport, was in the Nevsky area of Leningrad,
historically home to many factories, including shipyards and steel foundries.
2
A reference to the anniversary of the October Revolution, celebrated on 7 November.
3
Russian school and college marks are given according to a system of one to five, with five the highest mark. A three is
equivalent to a C.
4
By November 1942 the government had identified various edible substances that could be used to eke out bread; these
included cotton, hemp, flax seedcake, cellulose (from wood), bran chaff, etc.
 155

all the factory workers and almost everybody will have to go without bread. Theyll use
their last wretched cereal coupons on vegetable soup, eat it without any bread, and go
out to work just about all day and all night on no more than a bowl of hot water. And
tomorrow, theyll probably only be giving out 100 grams per day. What a life! Surely,
back home they must feel that Im about to die of hunger, that Im in agony here, stuck
in this lonely life, which it doesnt look as if Ill ever survive.
13 November. On the night of the 12th to the 13th of November there was a bad
air raid. One bomb fell directly on the post office, and there was serious damage from
the resulting fire. In the morning, the post office was cordoned off and no one was
allowed near it. On Decembrist Yakubovich Street, a bomb dropped on a crche and
the whole building was demolished. Its a dreadful sight. We didnt get up when the air-
raid warnings went off, so its a pure fluke that we survived. This morning we woke up at
7.45 and listened to the latest news. They were reporting yesterday that Leningrad was
surrounded by a ring of steel, and that the Germans had been intending to take the city
by storm, but hadnt managed to do so. Now they are trying to starve us into submission.
So now we have to endure not only merciless bombing and artillery attacks, but death
by starvation. Soon therell be no escaping it. Were all going about like hungry wolves.
All we get to eat in twenty-four hours is a plate of soup and 150 g of bread. Manual
workers get 300 g of bread and non-manual workers get 150 g. Were all feeling terribly
weak and very dizzy. In class, we sit there stupidly, muddling everything. And on top of
this, on top of the hunger, we have to face the tragic, panicky ordeal of sudden artillery
attacks. Death is at every step. Dear God! It looks as if it will never end. I keep dreaming
about the future, of how Ill live in the country, spend every night at home in the village
with my parents, eating potatoes and soup. Then I wake up with an empty stomach, and
my chest all tight with hunger. My head just isnt working properly. Even if we survive
this war, well still come out of it cripples or stupid, crazed fools. But it doesnt look as if
well survive. People say the city will fall to the Germans, and we cant expect anything
good from them. Farewell, my native soil, my own village, my dear parents, farewell,
Grandma, my sister, farewell, you friends of my happy childhood, Farewell, everyone.
I expect Ill die of hunger or be killed in an air raid or an artillery attack.
22 November 1941. Saturday. Weve been at war for exactly five months with the
German invaders. Leningrad is on the brink of ruin. Soon Hitler will achieve his plan to
take Leningrad by starvation. The daily ration in the army has been reduced: Red Army
soldiers get only 300 g a day now instead of 600 g hardly enough to fight on. I dont
even want to think about it. I couldnt bear to fall into the hands of the Germans. That
would be certain death. Our fate will be decided soon. I dont expect anything good to
happen. Ive completely lost hope that the roads out of the city will ever open again.
From newspaper reports and the stories told by wounded soldiers in the hospitals, weve
all heard of all the completely insoluble difficulties that have to be overcome in the
 156

battle for the road. Our army is unlikely to break the blockade, so well be starved into
submission. Productivity is already falling in all our factories, and theres no sign of
victory as far as the road is concerned. I dont even think about home any more. Its
pointless anyway and it only upsets me. Ive been deservedly punished by God for all
my foolishness
28 November 1941. Friday. At college today only the second-year girls had classes. I
got up, went to the post office, and got bread, Tatyana went to work, I had some coffee,
scooped out the jam and ate it all. I tidied my room. I found some letters I had written
home, and to Mama, among Tanyas things; she had opened them and read them. It
really hurt to see how she feels the need to control me. Why does she need to check up
on me, does she think Im a spy or something? At 10.30 I went to Technical Mechanics.
I went to the library and got out a new book, The Precipice, vol.1, by Goncharov. Ive
heard its good. Ill give it a go. Classes were on today. I didnt finish one of the questions
in the maths test. The air-raid warning went off again. Too bad and the raid went on
till five. Thats two and a half weeks theyve been flying out and bombing at the same
time of day. Bombs were dropping nearby and we sat there in the lecture writing notes.
22 December 1941. Monday. Yesterday was a day off. Tanya and I got hold of 600
g of Accra coffee-flavoured sweets, weve both used up all our rations for the third ten-
day period. What a stroke of luck the shop Im registered with1 never has anything,
except jam sometimes, and then you have to queue, and its not worth it. But today I
got all these sweets for all three ten-day periods in the shop Tanya uses. We couldnt get
into the canteen, as our cafe was shut today. Tanya and I had 125 g of bread with some
soup, and I got another 125 g of bread for lunch, and in the evening we had six sweets
each and a cup of coffee.

1
In Winter 1941, citizens of Leningrad were officially attached to specific shops, usually near to where they lived, in an
effort to regulate the issue of rations.
 158

In 1996 a package that contained a diary in the schoolboy handwriting of a sixteen-

year-old was delivered to the Museum of the Defence and Siege of Leningrad. In the letter
accompanying it, Borya Kapranovs older brother wrote: I apologise for bothering you, but
I decided to contact you and ask you to take a look at my brothers diary, in order to decide
if it would be suitable as an exhibit for the museum.
Before the war the three Kapranov brothers lived with their mother, father and
grandfather in the town of Kolpino, which is now within the city limits of St Petersburg. In
September 1941 they were evacuated to Leningrad, where they moved into the evacuation
centre on Saltykov-Shchedrin Street. Borya, who had completed the eighth grade of school
before the war, served in a firefighting regiment and also studied for a short while in the
Naval Political College. The diary entries from this period are full of fighting spirit: There
is some force summoning me to the front The boredom here is intolerable. The Germans
dropped leaflets that said: Finish up the soybeans on the 6th, prepare your coffins on the
7th. Some stray bomb could fly in and I could die, without doing any good at all, but at
the front I could at least do some good. I want to take revenge for my comrades, for my
motherland. The diary concludes in a quite different key the boredom is transformed
into hell: Again I can barely shuffle along, breathing is a struggle and life is sheer misery
now. I wish I could never see you again, Leningrad. People are collapsing in the street from
hunger, the same way as before. Several people have died in our building, and today the
men from our room were asked to help carry out a dead body Whats going to happen to
us? Will I survive in this hell?
In his accompanying letter, Boryas brother wrote briefly about the main characters in
the diary: he, the other brother, Valentin, and their mother managed to get out of the city in
March 1942; the brothers grandfather had starved to death in January; their father died in
an evacuation hospital in late March.
Borya himself did not wait to be evacuated officially. He set off along the Road of Life
with a group of Komsomol members and was killed. He didnt survive in that hell.
His diary is now on display in the museum.
 159

14 October. Ive been a soldier for a month now, in No. 1 Platoon of the 13th
Company of the Komsomol Firefighting Regiment for the Defence of the City of
Leningrad When I joined the regiment, like everyone else I was immediately issued
with overalls, boots and a peaked cap and also, a little later, a padded jacket. Everyone
has mittens, a helmet and a belt.
We live in the barracks and eat in the mess, only we have to hand in our ration
cards. All the bedding is provided. We eat three times a day. Were fed on a military
timetable and, bearing in mind the present situation, with Leningrad encircled, were
fed well
18 October. My nerves are so taut now that every jarring sound puts me in an
irritable mood. Thats when Im resting. Going on watch, I take no notice of the
bombs, Ive got so used to them. When a bomb whistles, I wait to see where it will fall
and how soon. The news we get from the front is depressing the Germans are closer
to Moscow and Leningrad. We have no fear of the enemy. Weve come to terms with
this situation. Some of the lads want to do a lot to help the Motherland and theyre
eager to go to the front. I applied to join the draft, but they dont take anyone born in
24 or 25
20 October. Quiet for a few days. Its snowing. Foggy. There havent been any
raids. I tried to join the artillery school, but since my school report card was left in
Kolpino, they didnt take me.
The food situation in the city is bad. Non-working dependants receive 200 g of
bread, and they dont get any white bread or butter at all.
The food situation is especially bad for refugees There have been cases of
nursing infants dying. Workers eat in the factory canteens and some are registered at
state canteens. They only feed them according to their ration cards there too, but its
still better. Were fed quite well, but the waiters are great cheats. The commander and
the sergeant major get more, and they keep quiet.
The company Komsomol Committee has only recently got involved in this matter
and improvements are anticipated.
We dont drive to work, because there isnt any petrol.
23 October. It happened in summer, during August. We were living in at School
No. 9. They moved us from the gym on the first floor to the science lab on the second
floor. We slept calmly for a couple of nights. Life was going on as normal. It was a
beautiful, sunny day. We were getting on with our work. Suddenly we heard explosions
from the direction of the prison camp, out in the open country. The explosions came
more and more often. What was it? Everyone was surprised and giving each other
puzzled looks, as if they were asking a question. We ran to the window and started
watching. Then there was a loud whistle and white smoke appeared, and then there
was an explosion, as if someone had smashed a dry plank, exactly the same sound,
 16 0

only the crack was louder. Then more and more explosions. It was the Germans
shelling the anti-aircraft battery, which had beaten off their vultures time after time
with its accurate fire, defending the city and the factory, which had great military
importance.
The shells landed closer and closer to the target. From the window we clearly saw
several shells hit the Red Army mens dugouts. Two Messerschmitts, flying close to
the forest, were guiding the firing precisely. Our patrol, consisting of three fighter
planes, was either afraid to confront them or had a different objective, it just flew
above the city and especially over our school, since there was a naval observation
post on the roof that guided the fire from ships moored in the Neva and a local anti-
aircraft defence watch tower.
There were wounded men at the anti-aircraft battery. They tried to move it to
somewhere else, but they couldnt. German planes arrived. We heard salvoes from
anti-aircraft guns on all sides. An armoured train fired from the station. Suddenly the
Germans attacked our planes and an aerial battle started up. The rumble of explosions
was joined by the roar of engines and the crackle of machine guns. One plane (I dont
know whose) burst into flames and went into a steep dive. It crashed into the field
behind the white camp huts. A pillar of black smoke, mingled with sparks, rose up to
the sky.
The battle ended, but the shelling continued. The buildings on the edge of town
and the camp huts were riddled with shrapnel. A shell landed in front of the school,
the only one that reached the town that day. The shelling stopped as suddenly as it
started. We went home to eat. Although the mood in the town was tense, there wasnt
any destruction yet. People went into the shelters. How dear and lovely the town
seemed then.
In the evening the Germans dropped several bombs in the area around the railway
station. The next day the shelling began in the early morning. Several people were
killed in front of the school and a building was destroyed. All the electric cables were
cut. The light went out in the shelters. Shrapnel started tearing through the air. The
commander of our squad told us to go down into the shelter. The moment we went
down, there was a loud crash in the next room. A shell had flown in through the
window of the school.
The Germans had tried to demolish the observation tower. They started switching
their fire to the factory. B. Mikheev left us to go home and he never came back. A
shell hit their building.
When we walked through the town after the shelling, the glass in almost all
the windows was broken. There were lots of craters in the streets. The streets were
deserted. The next day there was more shelling. And the day after that too. We packed
our things and moved into Leningrad with the stream of refugees. There we went to
 161

Leningrad used to be a city of fun and joy, and its become a city
of sadness and grief, Borya wrote. Leningrad is the mass grave of
hundreds of thousands, among them 16-year-old Borya Kapranov,
who speaks to us from the dying city in these pages. Still alive, still
hoping
Photo from the collection of the State Memorial Museum of Leningrad Defense and Siege.
 162

46 Ligovka Street and they sent us to Gagarin Street, and from there I joined the
regiment.
31 October. There was a lull in the raids for about ten days, but the bombing
started up again from the 29th. We didnt go out to any fire. On the 29th at 8 or 9 in
the evening there was an accident. It shocked us very badly and were in a dejected
mood. I invited Kotkin to have a game of billiards. When the game was in full swing
we heard a loud explosion. The broken windows rattled and everything outside was
lit up for a moment. I thought theyd dropped a high-explosive bomb in front of the
building. Running out into the corridor, I saw smoke coming from the next room, the
one that we slept in. Orlov came running out past me, but I didnt notice anything.
Kornilov ran out after him, with his face black and burned, pressing his hands over
his eyes. Then came Shimko, with the left side of his face scorched. And Lebedev,
with his eyes squeezed shut. They had been injured by shrapnel. Kuznetsov dragged
out our political instructor with his face all burned and his clothes smouldering on his
body.
The room was filled with acrid smoke. Pillows were burning, and a mattress, a
blanket and padded coats. Everyone was lugging in buckets of water. The girls were
crying, because the casualties were all people we knew well. The political instructor
had suffered severe burns, and they bathed his face hurriedly in the corridor and
cut off his overalls, because they were smouldering. The casualties were given help.
Berger called an ambulance. Kornilov, Lebedev and Shimko were taken to the girls
room and the political instructor was carried in there too. When Orlov ran out in the
street, he immediately met a female medical assistant from a voluntary militia patrol
and she took him to the eye hospital on Mohkovaya Street. The ambulance arrived
and the casualties were hastily bandaged up and driven to the Pioneers Palace. Lots
of policemen and military policemen came running up and what had happened
started becoming clearer. The company commander and Chistov, who were in the
room at the time of the explosion, testified at the police station.
It turned out that the men had decided to heat up the stove with an incendiary
bomb that the company commander had brought in. The political instructor brought
the bomb from the commander and gave it to the lads. Orlov put it in the stove and set
firewood round it. The political instructor sat down facing the stove door. Kornilov
was nearby too. Shimko and Lebedev were further back. They joked about how long
the bomb was taking to explode. The moment Orlov leaned forward to move it a bit,
there was a loud explosion and the thermite came flying out of the stove, together with
the bomb. The stove was torn apart. Probably there was ammonia-based explosive in
the bomb. Everyone was concussed. The political instructor got up and fell down
again. Kuznetsov was there too, but he wasnt hurt and he immediately dashed to
douse the flames on the political instructor and carry him out. Shimko and Lebedev
 163

are already back here, since they got off lightly. Orlov, Kornilov and Troshchenkova
are in hospital. Theyre not in great shape, in fact theyre in a very bad way, especially
the political instructor.
We moved into the duty room and were sleeping and spending our time in here
for now.
2 November. Yesterday I received my ration cards and handed them in They
didnt want to give me the cards at first, but when I argued a bit they issued them.
They didnt give me the ones for manufactured goods, because I didnt have some
chit or other that I couldnt get anywhere.
Yesterday I was issued size 43 rubber boots. Theyre too big, but I can wind on a
few more foot wraps and it will be warm
Four girls have left us. The commander let them go, since he thought we didnt
need them. One left without permission. He doesnt let the boys go, and when one
wanted to leave, the commander yelled that he would shut him in a cold room and
didnt let him go.
Today we each received a 100 g bar of chocolate, two little cakes and 150 g of
sweets. This was due to us on our ration cards for the holiday and we paid too, of
course. Father came from Kolpino, and I was really glad. He told me that our building
there has been riddled with shrapnel. Several shells exploded close to it. I also learned
the good news that my old schoolmate Vladimir Kuzynov is here, he hasnt been
evacuated. Im thinking of going to visit him when I have a free hour or two.
They gave us soup for breakfast for the first time. Theyre going to give us it every
other day now. The raids are getting frequent again
4 November. On 3 November there was an unpleasant incident involving me and
another soldier, comrade Borunov. We were given chocolate and cakes and then
sweets in the evening. During lunch, when I got my chocolate, Kuznetsov asked me
to sell everything for three times what I paid. I refused. Then he started asking again,
saying he wanted it for his mother. I sold him one cake and ate the other myself. Later
on, when Id eaten some chocolate and still had half the bar left, Kuznetsov asked me
to sell it for 15 roubles, when the entire bar had only cost 5 roubles and 2 kopecks. I
thought he was joking at first and I didnt sell it, but later I agreed to sell it after all,
influenced by the fact that I needed the money.
When I bought the chocolate, I wasnt thinking of reselling it at all. It wasnt that
I was seduced by the money, I simply didnt think at all and I didnt realise that I was
being unfair to a comrade with whom I had lived for almost two months, sleeping in
the next bed. After I sold it, I went to room 22 to play billiards and told everyone there
about the deal. They started laughing and saying one of them would sell his chocolate
to someone else too, and eventually the same thing happened again, Borunov sold
Yerofeev half a bar or even less for the same price.
 16 4

That evening the lads, led by Shimko, started explaining to me what Id done and
what it led to. They said that maybe tomorrow Id sell my padded jacket, then go and
sell bread, and so on. That it was looting and speculation. And if it got out and was
passed on to a Revolutionary Court Martial, I could get eight years. On Ayzikovich
and Shimkos suggestion, they decided to hold a comrades court and not take the
matter beyond the platoon. They called the political instructor.
The judgement of the court, presided over by Ayzikovich, since he studied at law
school and understands a few things, and with Comrade Prede acting as secretary,
was a public reprimand before the unit. It went further, since Shimko, the political
instructor and Prede said the Komsomol couldnt leave it at that. They immediately
called a meeting of the Komsomol groups and gave me a strict reprimand with a
warning, to be noted in my personal record. Some of them said this was too much,
but Shimko and Ayzikovich kicked up a rumpus again, recalling all sorts of cock-and-
bull stories and dragging in other nonsense. Basically, they made a mountain out of a
molehill. They decided that if it happened again, it would be taken even further.
Ill remember this incident for a long time, of course, and I dont think it will
happen again. We learn from our mistakes. Later on the case was examined by the
Komsomol committee in the presence of the company commander, the platoons
political instructor, the political instructor of No. 3 Platoon, the Komsomol organisers
of Nos. 1 and 2 Platoons and the company sergeant major. They left things as they are
and are going to hand the case on to the District Party Committee.
In a shop I met D. Reshetnikova, a girl who was at school with me, and found
out that Vladimir Orlov had been killed by a Fascist sniper. When he got back from
a reconnaissance mission, he took dinner to a Red Army soldier and was hit by an
explosive bullet that killed him on the spot. He died on 22 October. Yu. Nikitin
has been killed too. They were both good comrades and excellent Komsomol
organisers
6 November. Yesterday lots of regiment members who were born in 1923 received
call-up notices for the army. I really want to join the army too, as a volunteer. Ill
try again. They clothe us and feed us well here, but theres some force summoning
me to the front. Ill have a talk with Koenen, and if he agrees, it will be more fun to
try together. The boredom here is intolerable. The Germans dropped leaflets that
said: Finish up the soybeans on the 6th, prepare your coffins on the 7th. Some stray
bomb could come flying in and I could die, without doing any good at all, but at the
front I could at least do some good. I want to take revenge for my comrades, for my
motherland
17 November. The thing I have wanted for a long time has finally happened.
Today I was registered as a first-year student at the Naval Political College. On the
21st at 12 oclock I have to go to room 8 at 59 Moika Street, taking my tooth powder
 16 5

and toothbrush with me, but I wont take any powder, because I dont have any. I
have to get my name taken off the register at the District Party Committee and put all
my personal affairs in order
19 November. For breakfast today they gave us 20 g of pressed caviar, 100 g of
bread and tea. We didnt eat the soup, because it was too disgusting to put in your
mouth. For dinner they gave us 100 g of bread, macaroni soup, macaroni with a
sausage, a sweet and tea. For supper there was cabbage soup, 100 g of bread, a sweet
and tea. Now Im not a fireman any more.
20 November. AT HOME. Today I finished completely with my job in the
Komsomol Firefighting Regiment for the Defence of the City of Leningrad.
Yesterday evening I handed in my uniform and today I received my ration card and
I didnt eat there any more. In the morning Mother bought cabbage soup and mixed
it with boiled buckwheat and we had the soup, if you can call it that, for breakfast.
Afterwards we drank tea. At about 12 oclock we made soup out of boiled rice and
ate that, and well have the same for supper. We ate 70 g of bread each. To get my
ration cards I had to chase around a lot But in the end I got them, and now Im
finished with the platoon. Ive just been to the District Party Committee to get myself
taken off the register. I handed in my service ticket and was given a note saying that
I had been taken off the register. Now I have to get ready one or two things that will
be needed in the college. I have a little suitcase, and I think I can fit everything into
it, since Ill only be taking a few things. Ive been to the bathhouse. First Valya and I
went to Tchaikovsky Street, because he said the bathhouse there was better. But the
bathhouse was closed because there wasnt enough water, and we went to Nekrasov
Street and got washed there. Now I have to get my head shaved. I was just riding
in a tram and I heard an army man say: I look at boys about 15 years old and they
either dont say anything or theyre complaining, but in 1918 there was only 100 g of
bread and nothing else. Things were bad in 1918, but things arent good now either.
Hunger, cold and bombing. What were you like before, Leningrad? Fun and joy on
the streets. Hardly anyone walking along with a sad face. You could get anything you
wanted. Signs saying hot rissoles, pies, kvass and fruit, pastry and confectionery,
just go in and get it, as long as you had the money. Not just a street, but everything
for the sweet life. And what have you become now, Leningrad? Streets filled with sad,
depressed people. They can barely shuffle along. Theyre thin. I look at the ruined
buildings and the broken windows and it breaks my heart. I read a shop sign and I
think: Thats what used to be, but will we ever see that life again? Leningrad used to
be a city of fun and joy, and its become a city of sadness and grief. Before, everyone
wanted to come to Leningrad they couldnt get permission to live here. Now
everyone wants to get out of Leningrad and they wont let them out. How could
things possibly be good, when non-working dependants only get 125 g of bread and
 16 6

every day they expect the ration to be reduced? Then add in the night-time bombing
raids and the artillery shelling. But morale is very important, and right now its very
depressed. Children often die. Those are the facts. And a fact is a stubborn thing
4 November. The Naval Political College. Rise and shine! the barracks orderly
shouts, Rise and shine! I hear beds creaking and all over the room shaved heads
pop out from under the blankets like mushrooms. The lads reluctantly clamber out
of the darkness, make their beds and go to get washed. I have been lying awake for
the last two hours. I was lying there thinking about various things. About my past,
when I used to go to school. How joyful and carefree we were. We didnt think about
anything. About how the war started and I was in a self-defence group. And then I
came to Leningrad. It all flashed through my mind. I thought about the present, and
my heart ached. How are things back at home? Mother and my brothers have a ration
of only 125 g of bread, they get bad cabbage soup from the canteen once or twice a
day, but coupons for 25 g of grain are taken for it. Their grain coupons wont last
long. Im provided for here, but how are they? I thought about the future. Perhaps
I would be a political instructor in the Navy. That is a profession for a lifetime. The
work would be hard. Studying is hard too. But I have to overcome all the difficulties
Im young and almost everyone is older than me. Perhaps I ought to leave?
I havent seen much of life yet, and all the difficulties frighten me. Suppose I do
become a political instructor. Ill be 17 or 18. How am I going to work with the Red
Navy sailors? But on the other hand Id be well provided for. I dont have enough
experience of life yet. I want to leave here right now and go home and finish secondary
school, and go to a college after that. Only then what frightens me is that Id be half
starved, Id have to live on 125 g of bread, I wouldnt have any money. Now at least
Ive spared my family unnecessary trouble. But then other thoughts occur to me,
squeezing these ones out and jumbling them up. Youre a Young Communist. You
have to endure all the deprivations. Overcome all the difficulties. Summon up the
strength you need to overcome the difficulties. Then youll be at least some help to
your parents. Youll help your brothers to complete their school studies. After all, its
hard for them to raise three children. Especially now that my fathers been drafted. It
will be hard work, but I have to try as hard as possible to cope with these difficulties
27 November. I woke up early. Id slept very well. The evening before, I threw
my greatcoat on top of the blanket and snuggled up under it, pulling my head in. I
got warm and soon fell asleep. A pleasant drowsiness flooded my whole body and
soon I fell asleep like a lord. I woke up and peeped out from under the blanket. It
was cold and I soon snuggled back down under the blanket, covering my head again.
But then I thought that I ought to write my diary and I got up quickly. Its not good
to write in the evening, because there are a lot of people and they can disturb you.
Right now no one will disturb me. Everyones still asleep. There are about a hundred
 167

beds in the room. And two stoves. But the door doesnt shut and it gets cold quickly.
One company sleeps here, thats four classes. I dont know where theyve moved the
others to. Yesterday we were still sleeping doubled up, two on a bed. Now Im writing,
but Im thinking about home. About how my brothers and Mother are getting on
and what news there is from Father. It breaks my heart to think how hard it is for
them now. It will probably be a long time before Im allowed go home. Yesterday
I sent a letter. Will I get a reply soon? Or perhaps their building has been hit by a
bomb or a shell? Thats what Im afraid of. And the future frightens me too. Im too
young, perhaps I ought to leave. But no, I mustnt do that. If there wasnt a war,
then everything would be different. Id have finished the 10-year school and gone to
a military college somewhere, or gone anywhere I wanted. Maybe Id already have
a job. This is a military college too, but the conditions here make it very difficult to
study. Only as it happens, I really do want to join the Navy, I want to graduate from
this college. Ive taken the first steps. Perhaps I wouldnt have got in here before,
but I got in very easily now. On the other hand, they used to turn out good political
instructors before. Now the study programme has been cut back and well be given
less knowledge, and that means the job will be harder to do. Everyones asleep now.
Only three people are dressed, including me.
28 November. Today I sent another letter home and enclosed my exact address.
From the very first day Lieutenant Piskunov said that we were in a difficult situation,
it was cold and nothing was ready. Wed have to learn hard lessons in the school of
life, which was actually quite useful, because when we found ourselves in a difficult
situation later on, it would be easier to understand how people feel. But it was a
temporary phenomenon, wed have to put up with it.
The regimental commissar also said that the conditions we have here were difficult
and many had been disappointed. They thought that when they got here everything
would be ready, that it would be warm and so on. But it was only temporary, it wasnt
deliberate. And it was because the college was being transferred from Kronstadt and
nothing was ready. Wed have to do everything ourselves. Fit out the classrooms,
lug in the beds and set them out, seal up the windows. And the problems with our
food had got worse too. Theyd had to reduce the ration because Leningrad was
encircled and under siege and they couldnt bring any food in. Well try to cope with
all the difficulties. Weve almost set everything up already. Weve got our kit and our
uniforms, we sleep on beds in a warm room now, the classrooms have been fitted out,
the windows are sealed up. We still have to get the steam heating working. But we also
have to prepare various different teaching rooms and teaching aids.
But its not just the food or these difficulties, the siege affects us in other ways
too. Just today, as often happens, as we were lining up for dinner, there was an air-
raid alert. Our building was rocked by a powerful explosion. While we were queuing
 168

up outside the gates of the mess, there were anti-aircraft shells zooming over our
heads and bombs falling in the distance. Or at the information briefing at 6 oclock.
Everything was quiet, then suddenly we heard a powerful explosion not far away. The
building shook and then the walls and the floor started swaying, and so did we. The
lamp hanging from the ceiling looked as if someone had given it a push. Or when we
walk to the barracks with shells exploding. Its the Germans shelling our district. But
thats already become an ordinary event.
Yes, we really will learn hard lessons in the school of life and mature early. There
isnt a trace left of our former lightheartedness. I can feel my views and my moods
changing. I already look at things from a different angle I often miss my home and
family. It wrings my heart when I remember the conditions my brothers and Mother
are living in. Its really tough for them, but what can I do to help? Fathers at the front
now in Kolpino, in the local anti-aircraft defence team. He might not be fighting, but
hes right there beside the front. Theres fierce fighting going on close to Kolpino. I
take at least a little comfort in the fact that Im not dependent on my parents and I
help them at least a little bit in that way. Father doesnt have a job, and neither does
Mother, and they need money. They pay Father the average wage, but it isnt enough.
I chose a bed that I took a fancy to
1 December. My feelings are all confused. Im thinking of leaving because Im so
sick of everything here. I cant live like this any longer. This endless changing around
and building things and the rigorous demands are such a torment to me, I feel like my
hearts about to break. Ive never suffered like this before. I told the company sergeant
major how I feel, that I want to go and Im waiting for him to report to the college
regimental commander. Will I be able to get out soon?
2 December. I still want the same thing, to get away from here, and Im
expecting to be summoned by Lieutenant Piskunov any minute now, so that I can
get permission to leave this place entirely. Yesterday evening the class leader called
me over and asked if I really want to leave the college, since he had heard rumours
about it. I told him that I did. Why? Because Im not old enough, and I dont want
to devote my entire life to serving in the Navy, I replied. He made a note beside
my name and said he would report to the company sergeant major. But Id already
informed the company sergeant major before that, at dinner, and he was going to
report to the head of the course. And then for the whole day after dinner I pestered
my C.O. about whether I could be sent to the army if I was born in 1925 and whether
they would let me go at all. So he was already tired of answering my questions. In
the morning I was impatient to find out the result and at dinner I asked the company
sergeant major. He told me he had reported everything and I would be summoned.
Not knowing was almost too much to bear and I went and found the lieutenant
myself and reported everything to him. He made a note and said he would summon
 169

During the very bleakest days

of the siege, in the winter
of 19411942, there were
thirty-nine schools operating in
the city, and later the number
increased to eighty. Children
were taught in ruined buildings,
as shown in this photograph,
and in air-raid shelters. Creches
and nurseries were opened,
as well as orphanages where
little Leningraders lived after
everyone else in their family
had starved to death.

The theme Death to the

child-killers was very
popular among artists who
painted posters during the
war. The subjects varied,
but the meaning was the
same vengeance awaited
the Fascists for every childs
life that they had taken. This
poster hung on the corner
of Ligovsky Prospekt in
Leningrad.
TASS.
 170

me. Now Im going to write a request to him and if I dont get a reply for a long time,
Ill present the request to him.
6 December. AT THE EVACUATION CENTRE. I couldnt bear it any longer
and decided to take more decisive action. After breakfast I sneaked off into the college
building and the lads went to their classes. I wandered up and down the corridor and
then kept going to the senior officers rooms, most often to the course heads, but they
were empty. I started wandering all over the building and found some exercise books
on a windowsill and took a few for myself. Finally my wait ended: I saw that the head
of the political department had arrived. I went to his room and opened the door after
knocking first. He was sitting at the desk, with the regimental commissar beside him,
and a staff officer facing him, reporting about something, and the political instructor
sitting on the sofa.
I waited for a few minutes until he was free and said to him: Comrade Battalion
Commissar, permission to speak! He gave me a surprised look: Who are you?,
Cadet Kapranov! What? he asked. Cadet Kapranov. Well, what is it? He got
ready to listen, half turning towards me. The point is that I want to leave the college
and Ive come to you about it! His attitude changed immediately. Why? Whats the
reason? The others looked at me too. I cant study here. Im sixteen years old and
how can I be a political instructor? His attitude changed again and his face turned
grey. I tell you what, Comrade Kapranov. Kapranov. Go and study. And dont come
to me again with matters like this. Yes, sir, and I turned and stumbled out.
I deliberately behaved that way, so that he would think the worst of me. But
after Id walked along the corridor a bit, I stopped. I suddenly felt a twinge in my
heart. What had I done? Why had I left without seeing things through? If you start
something, then dont give in, but Id lost courage. I was engulfed by a swarm of
doubts and thoughts like that. I went back, knocked and went in. Ive come to see
you again, Comrade Battalion Commissar. He and all the others were astonished. I
dont want to study in the college. I already told you, go and carry out your orders,
he answered angrily. I cant study here, why dont you just expel me? I said to him
and repeated all the reasons, rather confusedly, its true, and even lied a bit. Youre
a military man, enrolled as a cadet by official decree and you can only be expelled by
official decree. I already told you, go and study. Wait. We dont want people like you
anyway. I dont want to, I wont study here! I almost shouted. He got angry too. Im
giving you an order, and you carry it out, or Ill hand you over to a revolutionary court
martial for disobeying orders, you are a cadet, arent you? Not yet, Im a candidate,
I answered, although I was a cadet by official decree. No, youre listed as a cadet and
you can only be expelled by official college decree. Go. Im not going to study. I just
dont want to. Id rather go to the front! Where? As a scout or someone else in a
partisan unit. What good are you anywhere, youre sixteen. Youre a coward. Youre
 171

scared of difficulties. What would you do at the front? Theyll just discharge you and
youll go home. And when will the decree be issued? When its issued then youll
go. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow! I wanted to carry on arguing, but the political
instructor who was sitting there said: What do you want? Youve been told, so youll
have to wait. I realised he was right and I left
The college was moving to the Okhta District and some of the lads had left the
evening before. In the morning, at about 9 oclock, we were given a note saying we
hadnt been accepted into the college and we finally went home. At long last, to my
great delight, I was a civilian again and I took a good, deep breath.
13 December. I woke up before 6 oclock and couldnt get back to sleep. Almost
everyone was awake. We started talking about our dreams. And they all turned out to
be alike, because everyone dreamed about bread or other food. Valya had dreamed
that his pass had been stamped on the 19th and we were all being evacuated the next
day. We lay there talking like that until 7 oclock, but there was no light and it was too
cold to get up. And we stayed there, turning from one side onto the other, although
it was hard to lie there, because wed been lying down for almost a day and a night
and we were completely worn out by it. My leg still hurts, and turning over is absolute
agony
We can hardly even move our feet now. I get tired just walking up to the first floor.
We all walk around like ghosts. We dont know if the bread ration will be increased or
not, and were going to try to leave Leningrad at the first opportunity.
15 December. Were well into the second ten-day period, and theres nothing
in the shop. We cant even buy the miserable ration that our cards entitle us to.
Mother bought 250 g of coffee instead of sweets and now we drink that. There often
isnt any soup in the canteen, and the coffee takes the place of soup. We almost live
on water. There isnt any oil or fat at all now. For about eight days we boiled up
soup from cabbage that Father brought, but theres only enough cabbage left for
one more time. Everyone was expecting an increase in the bread ration, but there
isnt one. If things drag on like this, I wont last long. Im nothing but skin and
bone now.
Lots of people are dying. Here in our building several people have died, and the
morgues are all crammed with people who died from malnutrition and lay in their
rooms for a long time. At the cemetery there are mountains of dead corpses and there
arent enough coffins. In one incident a man and a young woman sat down for a rest
when they got to work. They were exhausted and fell asleep, so they died, because
their bodies were totally worn out by hunger. Another case happened in a shop. A
young girl came into the shop, grabbed a piece of bread, stood in the corner and
started eating it greedily. The shop assistant started swearing at her and hitting her.
But she just answered: Im hungry. I want to eat.
 172

There have been lots of cases of people catching cats and dogs, cooking them at
home and eating them. The famine is obvious from the fact that people are willing to
give 200 roubles for a kilogram of bread. People swell up and die. But not everyone is
starving. The women who sell the bread always keep back 2 or 3 kilos a day, and they
make a huge profit. Theyve bought lots and lots of things and hoarded thousands of
roubles. Top military men, the police and people in military commissariats all gorge
themselves too, and so do the people who can get everything they want in the special
shops. And they eat the way we used to eat before the war. Cooks have a good life,
and canteen managers, and waiters. Anyone who has a job thats even the slightest bit
important. They get food and eat their fill
So the facts demonstrate that half of Leningrad is starving and half is stuffing
itself. Theres lots of food in the special shops and ours are empty. The people at a
meeting to decide if the ration should be increased and improved arent hungry, but
all well fed, so there arent any improvements. Wheres the freedom and equality
that the constitution talks about? All our people are parrots. Can this really happen
in a Soviet country? It just drives me insane when I think about it all. This morning I
drank coffee without any bread. At 11 oclock I had some cabbage soup. I mixed a bit
of oilcake into it. But its still nothing but water. Theres no nutrition in cabbage and
oilcake. We left some of the cabbage soup for supper too. There isnt any oil or fat. I
can barely even move my feet. I feel dizzy. Will things go on like this for long? If they
do, we wont survive.
20 December. There are five families, 16 people in all, living in a room of 30
square metres. Each family has two trestle-beds and a little table. Its very cramped
24 December. I woke up at 6.15. Someone walked into the room and someone
started asking him what time it was. I dont know if he answered. But Skovorodka,
who was sleeping on the next trestle-bed and had a watch, struck a match and said:
A quarter past six. Ooh, time to get up! And Shikhova got up, lit the stump of her
candle and started tinkering with the stove. We have a cast-iron stove and people pile
all their kettles on it. Mother often boils water in a casserole right inside the stove. Its
quicker that way. Everyone in the room started moving, our family wasnt sleeping
either, but theres nothing to get up for and we talk about our dreams. I start telling
everyone my dream: Today I dreamed I was eating a white bread roll and I left half
of it. I saw a river, I saw myself catch a little white rabbit, like a goalkeeper. He darted
out of his burrow and I jumped and caught him and put him in a basket. Then I
gathered red mushrooms, a lot of mushrooms. What does that mean? The little
rabbit and the bun are good signs! Mother answered, and she told us her dream too.
Almost everyone in the room dreams about bread, since they all think about the same
thing, because theyre hungry. The entire room joins in the conversation The stove
warms up and the warm air reaches me too. I throw the blanket off my head. You
 173

know, Boris, yesterday I read in the newspapers that they need skilled tractor drivers.
Perhaps theyll be taking people for courses, you ought to join one, says Mother, also
crawling out from under her blanket. Is it good to be a tractor driver? Yes it is,
and a tractor driver earns good money, hes always well fed, and whenever he arrives
anywhere, they feed him first on the collective farm. I think about it and decide that
being a tractor driver is pretty good. All right, Ill join up if they take people on, I
answer. Mother got up and went to get hot water, but came back empty-handed,
there wasnt any soup today either
25 December. We got up as usual. Mother went to get bread. Father, Lyonya
and Valya were lying in bed. I was sitting at the table, writing my diary. Suddenly
the door swung open with a crash. Aunt Nadya came running in and shouted in
an unusual, joyful voice: God be praised, theyve increased the bread ration!
Everyone immediately emerged from under the blankets. How much? How much?
350 g for workers, 200 g for dependants, said Aunt Nadya. Weve already bought
everything for tomorrow So have we And so have we, people said on all sides.
I said it too: And so have we! But our mood was different now, more cheerful, and
the conversation was livelier. Mother brought the bread. We immediately ate 4045
g each with our tea. I crumbled it into the tea and ate several platefuls, gradually
adding more tea Father went for papirosas, but he didnt get any. I dont know
how were going to pay back the packs weve borrowed, after all, there arent any
papirosas anywhere, and if there are, you have to wait in gigantic queues . . . Owing
to the increased bread ration, everyones in a festive mood. They wanted to increase
it again from the 1st, because they cant give people more now, or therell be a lot of
deaths. After all, people have been starving, and if the ration is raised immediately to
400 g, thats too much for a starving stomach, and the doctors dont allow it Just
recently a woman was walking along and she fell down and died in terrible agony.
And a man fell down in the street too and died of malnutrition. Thousands die every
day. In our building alone just recently about ten people have died, and there are a lot
of young people among the dead. At the cemeteries there are long queues with dead
bodies wrapped in cloth. An awful lot of people are dying, and the living can hardly
even walk. Now well go on living too, but otherwise I wouldnt have lasted even a
few more days. Now were just going to wait, just wait to be evacuated. People in the
room are already singing.
1942
1/1 42. The New Year arrived today. What its bringing to us is a mystery concealed
in darkness. Its the first time weve ever seen in the New Year like this there wasnt
even a crumb of black bread and instead of celebrating round the New Year tree, we
slept, since there was nothing to eat. When I said yesterday evening that the old year
was on its way out, the answer I got was: To hell with that year, may the earth open
 174

up and swallow it! I really feel the same way, and Ill never forget 41. But the New
Year has brought even less joy. They havent given us any bread, theres no food in the
shops, and they still havent given us any sugar, sweets and fats for the last ten days of
December. I can barely shuffle along again, its a struggle to breathe and life is sheer
misery now. I wish I could never see you again, Leningrad. People are still collapsing
in the street from hunger, just like before. Several people have died in our building,
and today the men from our room were asked to help carry out a dead body. Theres
nothing at the canteen except lousy, watery, oilcake soup. That soups worse than
water, but beggars cant be choosers and we spend our coupons on that slop Whats
going to happen to us? Will I survive in this hell?
 176

Lena Mukhina is 17 years old and she lives with her adoptive mother (her natural
mother is seriously ill). Lena is a vivacious girl who judges herself very strictly and she is in
love with her classmate Vova: My beloved friend, my diary. I have no one but you, my only
adviser. I tell you all my sorrows, worries and regrets. And I ask only one thing from you:
preserve my sad story on your pages and then, when the time comes, tell my relatives about
all this, so that they will find out about everything if they want to, of course.
But surprisingly enough, after Lena grew up to be Yelena Vladimirovna Mukhina her
relatives never heard her speak about the time that she spent in besieged Leningrad
Lenas relatives still live in Moscow, and she herself lived there alone until 1991. After
the entries in her diary break off, Yelena Vladimirovna was evacuated to Gorky, wrote
Tatyana, her first cousin once removed. She returned to Leningrad in the autumn of 1945
and graduated from art school, and after that life took her all over the place, like a rolling
stone: she even went to the virgin lands development project and worked at a hydroelectric
power station in Siberia. At the beginning of her working life she created designs for mirrors
produced at the Leningrad Mirror Factory, and at the end of it she worked at the Kuntsevo
Mechanical Plant. She had no housing of her own and no family. She retired early, on
medical grounds. In truth she was sick at heart and spent repeated periods in hospital.
Perhaps it was the siege that undermined her psychological health like this She was
extremely fastidious and pedantic. There were always tables of reminders stuck up on the
walls of her apartment, while grains that had been sorted and cleared of little stones were
specially marked, and unsorted grain had its own special marking. Yelena Vladimirovna
lived a very secluded, poor life. Her only consolation was her infatuation with the popular
singer Muslim Magomaev. At a time when it was almost impossible to buy a television, she
set aside money to purchase one, so that she could watch her idol on TV. She followed him
on his tours, splurging money on tickets At one point she even babysat the daughter of a
friend of Magomaev, and a few little knick-knacks with connections to the singer came her
way: I remember a ballpoint pen of his that she cherished tenderly
Lena Mukhina died in a hospital bed, of cancer. Her sad story was preserved by
her diary, which in 1962 found its way, via some unknown route, into the St Petersburg
Central Archive of Historical and Political Documents (at that time the Leningrad Region
Communist Party Archive), where it remains today, and it was published in 2000 by
Azbuka-Attikus Publishing Group. In effect, the diary was its authors only possession, the
editors of the first edition of the diary stated at the presentation of the book. These were the
most vivid things that ever happened to her.
 177

23 June 1941. This morning they read out the long-expected news bulletin.
At four oclock on 22 June 1941, Hitlers armed forces crossed our border
and began advancing into our territory. Large formations of German bombers
dropped bombs on the peaceful cities and villages of our country: but at six
oclock the Germans clashed with regular units of the Red Army At only a
few points did the Hitlerites continue their advance and capture small towns and
settlements 3040 kilometres from the border.
The English high command and General Churchill have announced that
they will do everything possible to help the Russians, and the USA will help
them. Hitler has miscalculated, they said, he thinks that he can deal with the
Soviet Union before the onset of winter, and then he will make short work of
finishing off Western Europe.
But he has miscalculated, we shall strike at the enemy by day and by night
with redoubled force. We shall do everything we can to help Russia. We shall do
everything we can to save mankind from tyranny. First thing this morning work
began in our courtyard. They are hurrying to build a gas shelter that will occupy
the entire basement in the building. In the attic they are demolishing all the
partitions and little box rooms. They are made of wood, after all, and if a bomb
starts a fire in the attic, those box rooms will be excellent fuel.
28 June. At 4 oclock this morning there was an air-raid alert. We went to the
shelter. But almost no one in the building left, they stayed where they were. At
5 oclock the all-clear was sounded. We went out into the street, and there were
intense beams of bright sunshine slanting down from behind the bell tower of St
Vladimirs Cathedral. Large numbers of barrage balloons glowed brightly in the
sunlight. It was so beautiful that I didnt want to go home. A goods tram went
by, loaded with milk churns and crates with bottles of milk. I felt so happy and
full of joy. So calm.
1 July. Theyve been evacuating the children for 3 days now. Every morning
children from 1 to 3 years old and older go to the station in buses. Everyone
feels sick at heart. Every 100 children are assigned 1 teacher and 1 nurse. Today
Greta, Ira and Zhenya are leaving. Rebecca Grigorevna has been fortunate,
shes leaving as one of the supervisors. There havent been any air raids for two
days. On the radio they describe scenes of combat, they talk about vigilance and
the campaign against indiscreet talk, and they frequently remind us that the city
of Leningrad is under martial law and instruct us how to behave during a raid and
how to extinguish the incendiaries.
Decrees have been issued on labour conscription and the compulsory
surrender by the public of all radio transmitting devices, so that the enemy
cant make use of them. And we have plenty of enemies in the rear. Air landing
 178

operations are the enemys favourite stratagem. They drop men in huge numbers,
but thanks to the vigilance of Soviet citizens, collective farmers and the working
people, most of them are killed the moment they land. Others are caught by our
special mopping-up detachments of NKVD men and workers. But many of them
still havent been caught. They stroll round our cities dressed in policemens
uniforms or civilian clothes. The mission of these parachuting saboteurs is to
seek out essential information, blow up extremely important facilities, start fires
on collective farms, spread false rumours, incite panic, recruit new agents and
damage the radio, telegraph and telephone networks.
There are women among them too. Various absurd rumours about these spies
are doing the rounds of the city, like the rumour that two enemy planes recently
landed on Nevsky Prospekt
5 July. The Germans are advancing on Smolensk, even though they are
suffering heavy casualties. In Moscow and Leningrad citizens conscription
armies are being set up. Stalin spoke on the radio recently. Detachments of
volunteers walk by on the streets.
Yesterday I was at Vovas place. He is so fine, so young, healthy and exuberant.
Hes dreaming of getting to the Karelian Isthmus. Hes always making witty
remarks. How I love him.
Today I spent three hours (from 12 to 3) unloading a barge full of bricks. Its
labour conscription. The work isnt hard. Its just annoying that Im working
without being paid.
Ill get a job somewhere soon. Its time. I have to help Mama.
Abroad the hatred of Fascism and feeling of sympathy for us, for my great
motherland, are growing stronger.
Ah, Vovka! Id give everything to see you every day, all the time. No lines of
writing can express the feeling that I have for you. It cant be expressed in words.
But I want so much to express it. Only the heart can express it!
25 August Ive been spending almost all my free time with Tamara. The
two of us go up onto the hill opposite the school and start singing any songs at all
that come into our heads. Or we mull over what love is, how to explain the word
naivety in different words
29 August. Today Mama Lena revealed a terrible truth to me. Today she
decided to tell me that my mother is no longer alive. I still dont believe it. It still
hasnt sunk in yet. But I can already feel an empty void of loneliness descending
on me. No words can possibly convey how much we loved each other. Only a
mother and her own daughter can love each other like that
My hand is trembling. My heart is fluttering in my chest. She passed away
on 1 July. On 1 July, 1941, during a bloody war with the Germans, you died at
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The woman that this girl would grow into was destined to a life of loneliness.
Photo from the family archive of T. S. Mukhina.
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the age of 43, and I dont even know the details of your death. My Mama, my
dearest, darling Mama. Youre not here with us any longer. How can I survive
this? My heart is breaking. So here it is, the first blow that destiny strikes me. Im
shaking all over. Im going to run to Tamara right now.
I wish I could run to Vovka. I dont want to stay at home. I feel sick and
disgusted
How I wish I had a sweetheart, and then in this dreadful war we could swear
an oath to each other that if we survive, in a few years time we will join our lives
together for ever.
Oh, what grief! It hurts so much. Now that my own mother is no longer in
this world, I want so much to be loved
10 September. Its only 11 in the morning, but there have already been 3
air-raid alerts. I go to the bomb shelter every time now. I put on my winter
clothes and my galoshes and I take my little suitcase with me. Ill never part with
them now until the end of the war: in there I have a clean exercise book, Vovas
picture, money, two handkerchiefs, a bottle of tea, bread and this diary. Ive
written my telephone number and address on the inside of the lid of the suitcase,
if anything happens to me, the people at home can be informed. Right now there
isnt an alert, but I can hear the anti-aircraft guns firing.
My God, our city is just swarming with enemies. Theyve caught so many
people who fire signal rockets, but even so, as soon as theres a night raid, the
treacherous rockets fired by the elusive enemy indicate the target to be bombed.
Lots of people, who were at the gates, in the attic or on the roof yesterday during
the raid, said that the rockets kept flaring up above the bank (on Fontanka
Street), the Vitebsk Station and other important sites until bombs were dropped
on them
22 September. Im still alive and I can write my diary. Im not certain at all
any longer that Leningrad wont be surrendered.
There was so much talk, so many high-sounding words and speeches: Kiev
and Leningrad stand firm like unassailable fortresses! The Fascists will never
set foot in the flourishing capital of the Ukraine or our countrys northern gem,
Leningrad. And then what today on the radio they announce that following
many days of fierce fighting our forces have abandoned Kiev! What does that
mean? No one understands. Theyre shelling us, theyre bombing us.
Yesterday at 4 oclock Tamara came to my place and we went for a walk.
First of all we went to look at the ruined buildings The devastation is even
more terrible on Strelkin Lane. At one spot there the buildings on both sides
of the street are in ruins. Theres rubble scattered across the lane. There isnt a
single windowpane left. But the most terrible thing of all was the appearance of
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one building: its entire corner had been sliced off and we could see everything:
the rooms, the corridors and what was in them. In a room on the sixth floor
theres an oak sideboard with a little table beside it and hanging on the wall (this
is very strange) is an antique clock with a long pendulum. Theres a sofa covered
with a white dustsheet, standing with its back to us, up against the very wall thats
missing
Then Tamara and I stood in a queue for sparkling water in a bakery, and
then we sat in an air-raid shelter for half an hour, and then we argued for half an
hour about whose place we would go to. I won and we went to my place. Tamara
got stuck at my place until 8 oclock because there was an air-raid alert, and
we combined our efforts to write a note from me to Vovka. That scoundrel had
played another dirty trick on me, you see: the whole building is having the attic
whitewashed, and for our share of the attic we had to pay 15 roubles. Mama and
I decided that we would paint it ourselves and I decided to call our comrade in
to help, especially since this business was nothing new to him. I went to see him,
but he wasnt at home and I left him a note, which was passed on to him by his
father. I asked him to come and help me. But he didnt come. If he was busy, he
could have dropped round and told me: Im busy. No, its unforgivable. And
even if he was only an acquaintance (not to mention being a comrade!), then
out of the chivalrous feeling that should be only natural for all well-brought-up
boys of his age, he ought to have come. I wrote him a very firm note and gave it
to Tamara to pass on to him. Tamara and I agreed that if there was an answer,
she would call round to my place after 5, and if there wasnt, I would go to her
myself.
Tamara didnt come today and I didnt go to her place, since there are air-
raid alerts all the time. So I dont know if there is an answer or not. Its all very
intriguing. I think its like this: if Vova thinks we are comrades after all and he
feels ashamed of behaving like a swine, of course he will write a reply. If my note
was just a meaningless piece of paper to him, and he couldnt care less for me,
there wont be any answer. Although it could be like this: hell show that note to
the boys and theyll write a collective answer to me. But an answer like that will
be quite worthless to me
4/10/41. How long it is since I wrote anything. But today I couldnt hold
it in any longer. Oh, Lord God, the things theyre doing to us, to all of us
Leningraders, including me.
Im working in the hospital at the Clara Zetkin Institute for the Protection of
Motherhood and Childhood. We orderlies work a twenty-four hour shift: I work
from 9 in the morning to 9 in the morning of the next day, and then Im off till
9 a.m. the following day. And so I have to sleep every other night. Its very hard,
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but its bearable But then, on my days on duty I have enough to eat and I get
a class 1 ration card with 400 g of bread a day.
I havent seen Tamara since that evening when we wrote a note for Vova
and agreed to meet the next day. Yesterday I wrote her a note and asked Rosalia
Pavlovna to pass it on to Osya, so that he could give it to Tamara. So I still dont
know anything about the fate of my message to Vova. But Im not sorry in the
least that I wrote to him so sharply.
During an air raid I got talking to Ida Isaevna about the friendship between a
man and a woman. After all, you can only love one man, but apart from love, you
can be friends with lots of men. Ida Isaevna told me that when she was 17, she
had friends who were boys. And their friendship remains completely unclouded
to this day. Five of them in the class were friends, two girls and three boys.
Two of us are girls too: Tamara and I, and there are three boys Vova,
Misha and Yanya. I dont know why we arent friends. Its not that the boys treat
us badly, is it? No. And its not as if they arent appropriate as friends, either,
quite the opposite. They are exactly the kind of boys you can be friends with.
But whats wrong? I dont know. Only what I think is that we dont know how to
approach each other
Tamara and I dont have very ebullient personalities. And the boys are rather
unemotional too. Relations between us are stiff somehow, were terribly respectful
with each other. And Yanya doesnt really suit that well. A real professor, how
can anyone be friends with him? We could become friends if things were simple
and straightforward between us. The usual kind of relations between boys
and girls. If we liked each other. If they flirted with us. But weve been holding
back
12 October. Ive got quite used to my job already. The patients love me. On
the 8th I saw a dead person for the first time. That day two people died in our
section: a woman who was pregnant and had been wounded in the stomach and
a man, he died of gangrenous emphysema. Im not afraid of dead people at all.
I just feel so sorry for them, I want to cry. Especially for the man, after all I had
seen him alive not long before, he was like the others, smiling and smoking a
papirosa, and I liked his face a lot, he was so young and attractive. Then they
took him into the bandaging room and kept him there for 5 hours. Eventually they
brought him out into the corridor and I found out they were going to take him
into the operating theatre to cut off his leg. He lay there smiling, and then they
wheeled him away. And when they brought him back, he was unrecognisable,
he was breathing hard and groaning in agony, pale and trembling. Thats how I
remember him before he died. And then I was sent dashing off to the pharmacy
for oxygen. But when I came running back, the doctor met me in the corridor
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and said: No need to hurry, Mukhina, we dont need the oxygen any more, he
died. I couldnt believe my ears, I ran to my own section and theyd already
brought him out of the ward, he was lying there with his face covered with a
sheet. It was appalling
16 October. Winter is here. Yesterday the first snow fell. The Germans are
pressing us back in an overwhelming wave. Its terrifying to look at the map.
The latest information is depressing. Our forces have abandoned Mariupol,
Bryansk and Vyazma. Theres intense fighting in the Kalinin direction. Well,
that already means that we can regard Kalinin as taken. Whats happening is
dreadful. Vyazma is 150 kilometres from Moscow. So the Germans are 150
kilometres from Moscow. Today for the first time they announced on the radio:
The situation on the Western Front is grave. The Germans have concentrated
an immense number of tanks and mechanised infantry and broken through our
defences. Our forces have retreated, suffering huge losses. That was what the
radio told us. Theyve never told us anything like that before.
Im feeling depressed. Its beginning to seem as if were not destined to see
any bright days. Not destined to survive through to bright, joyful May.
The Germans will probably reduce Leningrad to ruins and then occupy it. All
of us who can escape will live in the forest. And well die there, either well freeze
to death or starve to death or theyll kill us.
Yes, a terrible winter has arrived, cold and hungry for many thousands of
people. Today Tamara will come to see me and well study English with Aka.
Tomorrow Ill go to work again. Things arent any easier there either. Anechka
and another two women have died. I spent almost all my last shift sitting at the
bedside of one dying woman
Today while I was sleeping and when I was asleep yesterday afternoon I kept
dreaming about Vovka. About how he came to me completely naked and hungry,
and I fed him and clothed him, and he thanked me very much and said that only
now did he really understand what a genuine friend is. And then someone was
chasing me with a knife, and they were right on my heels already, it was in the
garden in autumn, when suddenly I saw Vovka coming with the boys, and he
stuck his foot out and tripped my pursuer, and I was saved, and something else,
and then something else
11/11. November already. Snow lying everywhere. Frosty weather. I go to
school and study, and everything that I went through in October now seems like
a bad dream. Its hard even to imagine that only recently I was getting up a 6
oclock. At a quarter to 7 Mama and I left the house in the cold and the dark.
Then the tram, jammed full of people, the entrance, the garden with the path
trodden straight across it. I take off my outdoor clothes and Im already wearing
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my white coat and a white headscarf There they are, the patients, the bedpans
and the urgent demands: Lena, go over there; Lena, come here; Lena, run to the
pharmacy; Lena, run to the laboratory; Lena, take this urine for analysis. No,
its not a dream, its true. I was earning money. And suddenly they fired me. And
here I am in school again
So, now its all over. Vova, we knew each other and we parted. Everything
will scatter like smoke, and well forget each other, only sometimes, when youre
looking through a photo album, youll recall that once there was someone called
Lena Mukhina, a simple-hearted girl, and youll smile when you read this on the
back of a photograph: To the ugly duckling, from Lena. Perhaps destiny will
bring the two of us together again somewhere, Vova, but I shall never forget you.
Even if you are the worst villain in the entire world. A low brute, not worthy
of my attention. But even so, you are my first love, you are the boy who, without
even knowing it, was the first to ignite something in my heart, and that something
will carry on burning inside me for as long as I live, sometimes flaring up and
searing my entire being with the bitterness of disappointment and resentment
over something, and sometimes smouldering slowly. You are the dearest person
on earth to me. Be happy in your life, may you never know any cares or sadness.
God grant you all the very best.
Goodbye, Vovka!
Goodbye.
Oh damn, Ive worked myself up into a real state. And whats the point of it?
Therell be plenty of other boys, other young fellows
16/11. Another air-raid alert. When it gets to half past seven in the evening,
here come the Germans, right on time.
Today was a wretched kind of day. Aka went off to find something edible
at 9 in the morning and only came back at 5 oclock. Mama and I had already
resigned ourselves to the idea that Aka hadnt managed to get anything and we
werent going to have any dinner at all today, and suddenly Aka turned up, and
not empty-handed, but with meat jelly. She brought 500 g of it. We immediately
boiled up soup and ate two full plates each of the hot soup. The way we live now
is still bearable, but if things get any worse, I dont know how well survive then.
Before, only quite recently, Mama could get soup at work without using her
ration card, and they gave us soup at school for the first time. But the very next
day a decree was issued that ration cards had to be used for the soup too.
150 g of bread is obviously not enough for us. In the morning Aka buys bread
for me and herself and I eat almost all of it before school and Im left without
any bread all day long. I simply dont know what to do about it, perhaps it would
be best if I did this: take 50 g of the main course at the school canteen every
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other day on my grain ration card and not take any bread that day, and on the
other days live on 300 g of bread. Ill have to try it. But Im not feeling too well
in general. I have this empty, nagging feeling inside me all the time. It will be
my birthday soon, on the 21st of this month, Ill be 17 years old. Ill celebrate it
somehow. Its good that its at the start of the new ration period, the last ten days
of the month, so there will definitely be sweets. I long so badly to eat.
When the balance is restored again after the war and we can buy everything,
Ill buy a kilo of black bread, a kilo of spice cakes and half a litre of cottonseed
oil. Ill crumble the bread and the spice cakes, pour plenty of oil over them, rub
it together thoroughly and stir it up, then Ill take a tablespoon and enjoy myself,
stuffing myself absolutely full. Then Mama and I will bake lots of different pies,
with meat, with potatoes, with cabbage, with grated carrots. And then Mama and
I will fry up lots of potatoes and well eat them, browned and sizzling, straight
off the stove. And well eat macaroni ears with sour cream, and pelmeni, and
macaroni with tomato puree and fried onions, and a hot, white baguette with
a crispy crust, smeared with butter, with sausage or cheese, and it must be a
really big chunk of sausage, so that my teeth sink right into it as Im biting off
a piece. Mama and I will eat crumbly boiled buckwheat with cold milk, and
then the same buckwheat fried up in a frying pan with onions and gleaming
with all the extra oil. And finally well eat hot, greasy little pancakes with jam
and thick, fluffy griddlecakes. My God, well eat so ravenously, even well feel
frightened.
21 November 1941. And now my birthday has arrived. Today I have turned 17.
Im lying in bed with a temperature and writing. Aka has gone to look for some
kind of oil, grain or macaroni. I dont know when shell come back. Perhaps
shell come back empty-handed Tamara came to see me and she didnt
bring anything. The thing is that yesterday I gave her my grain and meat cards
and asked her to take some dinner from our school canteen today, to be specific,
two main courses on the grain card and, if it was still possible, 2 rissoles or 2 two
portions of sausage for the meat card, whatever there was. She promised.
The only hope Aka and I had for today was what Tamara would bring. We
decided that Aka would make a lovely thick soup, two saucepans of it, of out of
the main course, whether it was boiled grain, or macaroni or something else,
and wed divide the rissoles up between the three of us for the celebration and
have a rissole sandwich. And then how awful! Tamara came and didnt bring
anything, nothing at all, no main course and no soup, nothing She was angry
and sulky and she swore that she would never promise anything to anyone or do
anything for anyone again. The only thing I can make out from what she said
is that she stood in the queue for two breaks between classes and there wasnt
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anything left for her. The main course ran out, and then she bought one portion
of soup and spilled it. How she managed to spill it, I still dont understand. But
one thing I do understand is that all this is terrible.
Soon Aka will come back, frozen and tired and probably empty-handed.
That will be the final nail in the coffin. Shell find out that Tamara didnt bring
anything, and I dont know how shell survive that. And then Mama will come,
tired and hungry, shell try to come back a bit earlier today, she knows its my
birthday, and God knows what will happen if Aka doesnt manage to concoct
something in time
My dear, precious Mama will come back hungry. Ill press her to my heart,
hug her tight and tell her about the misfortune that has overtaken us. And I think
she wont be angry. Shell probably have had something to eat there after all.
Just as long as she doesnt get angry and cast a pall over my celebration. I dont
need anything more than that. Well have a glass of wine, and then well drink
tea with sweets.
As long as we dont quarrel, as long as everything is quiet and peaceful. Thats
my passionate wish
22/11 My bar, my beautiful bar of genuine English chocolate, where
are you? Why did I eat you? So festive and elegant, I should have just admired
you, but I ate you. What a pig I am. Now theres only one hope, or rather, one
consolation, if Mama wants to share with us, then Ill get another bar. And I
wont eat it, no, God forbid. Ill just admire it and only eat it when Mama doesnt
have a single crumb of chocolate left.
Ive just read my diary right through again. My God, how shallow Ive
become. All I think and write about is food, but after all, apart from food there
are heaps and heaps of other things
Yesterday I looked through my postcards. What beautiful postcards they used
to produce, with various different views, and now they produce cards so sloppily,
without making any effort, without taking any care. And I looked through all the
postcards with messages to me on the back that Mama sent me from Pyatigorsk
three years ago.
And I remembered there was a time, not so very long ago, only last winter,
when Mama and I dreamed of sailing along the Volga on a steamship. We made
enquiries and looked at how much it would all cost. I remember that Mama
and I firmly decided to go travelling somewhere in the summer. And well still
do it. Mama and I will get into a sleeper carriage with light-blue curtains and a
little lamp with a shade, and then that happy moment will come when our train
leaves the glass dome of the station and breaks free, and well hurtle off into
the distance, far, far away. Well sit at the little table, eat something delicious
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and know that waiting for us up ahead there are amusing things to do, delicious
things to eat and unfamiliar places, and nature with its blue sky, its greenery and
flowers. That waiting up ahead for us there are pleasures, each one better than
the last. And as we watch Leningrad receding into the distance, well say: That
is the city where we went through so much and suffered so much, where we sat
hungry in a cold room and listened to the rumbling of the anti-aircraft guns and
the roaring of the enemy planes. And well brush away all those memories like
an oppressive nightmare and turn our gaze forward, to the far distance that our
Red Star express is rushing into
27/11/41 The air-raid alert ended at five to six. But at half past six the
artillery shelling began. Mama came home on foot. Weve just been listening to a
talk by the academician Orbeli, and we learned that the Germans have plundered
the treasures of Peterhof and Pushkin. They have sawn up the Samson and taken
him off to Germany, and they demolished the Amber Room at Pushkin as well
and took that to Germany. The German people will have to go through hell and
high water to find us the amber to restore the Amber Room.
Just recently something that I dont understand a thing about has been
happening inside me. Not many desires, guesses and questions, but so many
thoughts, and theyve all got tangled up together in a ball, they squirm about
and theres no way I can untangle them. If only I could grab hold of some end
or other And worst of all, theres no one to confide in. Mama? She just comes
home, eats and goes to bed. She gets so tired now, after all. Tamara? But how
can I confide in her, and how much would she understand of what I tell her,
and what can I confide in her about? Im just empty inside, arent I, absolutely
empty? I dont understand anything, or rather, I understand everything, only I
dont know what I should understand.
I simply cant forget Vovka, I dream about him every day. Did I really love
him? I just cant tell if I did. And why cant I get to know even one boy in our
class
7/11 Theres a symphony on the radio, and the crash of artillery salvoes
outside. Its the cursed Germans shelling Leningrad yet again. And at night the
siren will wail ominously again and the house will shudder again when a bomb
explodes close by. Death hangs over every one of us all the time, weve got so
used to it that weve stopped noticing, or rather, we dont want to notice it
18 December Things at school are really terrible, to be frank. Ive let
geometry slip and I got a bad mark in the algebra test. Ive let technical drawing
slip. In chemistry I got a waiver. Well, thats just the same as a 1. I only have good
marks for German and history. On Saturday Im going to present a report on the
Battle of Gangut, and maybe Ill get Excellent for history. In literature I got
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a bad mark for the essay I wrote. Lots of grammar mistakes, and the essay itself
wasnt much good either. Tomorrow I can write it again. I think I ought to give it
a try, maybe I can get a good mark for it. But even if I dont rewrite it I still wont
get a 2 for the term, I already have a 4. It was very hurtful to hear our literature
teacher say that she was mistaken about me, that she thought I was better than
I really am. That Im one of the most anti-Soviet pupils. No, shes wrong about
that, in my heart Im a Soviet School Student, only in practice you cant really
say that about me, because Im really letting myself go now, I cant be bothered
to gather my strength, I think too much about myself. It will be the end of the
first term soon, and Im not studying my lessons at all, Im neglecting all the
material terribly, and of course Ill have to pay for it. I really upset Mama with
my poor performance. Of course, I could blame it on the fact that its hard to
study. But no one denies that. This is where my patriotism could show through if
only, in defiance of everything and despite the difficulties, I made every possible
effort to be a good student.
But then look what happens! All the talk and the dreams that I will be
worthy of the title of Soviet Citizen are nothing but idle drivel. The first ordeals
I encountered broke me, bowed my spirit. I surrendered. Im a cissy. I was
frightened by the difficulties. I just wrap myself up warm in lots of clothes and do
nothing, I eat my bread for nothing and just whinge: Its cold, its cold.
Yes, it is cold, but is cold really something that cant be overcome? No, cold
can be overcome
25/12. What happiness, what happiness! I want to shout out at the top of my
voice. My God, what happiness!
Theyve increased the bread ration! And by so much. What a difference: 125
g and 200 g. For office workers and dependants 200 g, for production workers
350 g.
Yes, this really is salvation, in the last few days we all became so weak that
we could barely even shuffle along. But now, now Mama and Aka will survive.
Thats the real happiness of it, and the fact that this is just the beginning of the
beginning of the improvement. Things will start to improve now.
Well see in the New Year merrily. With bread and sweets and chocolate and
wine. Hooray, hooray and hooray again. Long live life.
27/12. I still cant move my hands, although I got home ages ago. I came
back from the theatre. I went to the theatre again today. I watched and listened
to the drama theatres production of A Nest of Gentlefolk. I really had a good
time, Id love to go to the theatre every day, but even so I shant go again this
winter. Because the pleasure of it seems so small, compared with the torture of
coming back home
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A school photograph from 1941. Lena is third from the left in the back row. There is a war going on, she is in
love and even in this childish love she is already alone.
Photo from the family archive of T. S. Mukhina.
 19 0

2 January 1942. Its ages since I tried to write anything. So much has
happened in that time.
The New Year of 1942 arrived. And now Mama and I are alone. Aka died. She
died on her birthday, the day when she reached 76 years old. She died yesterday,
1 January, at 9 oclock in the morning. I wasnt at home when it happened. I had
gone to get bread. When I came back from the bakery, I was very surprised that
Aka was lying so still. Mama was calm on the outside, as always, and she told me
Aka was sleeping. We drank tea, and Mama cut a bit off Akas portion of bread
for me, saying that Aka wouldnt eat that much anyway. Then Mama suggested
that I should go the theatre with her to have dinner. I eagerly agreed, because
I was afraid to stay alone with Aka. What if she died, then what would I do? I
was even afraid that Mama might ask me to look after Aka while she went. And
I didnt even want to go near Aka, because it was very painful for me to see her
dying. I was used to seeing Aka on her feet, a dear, sweet, bustling old lady, she
was always busy with something. And suddenly Aka was lying there helpless, as
thin as a skeleton and so weak that she couldnt even keep anything in her hand.
I didnt want to see Aka like this, so I was glad to go with Mama. Mama
locked the door and took the key to Sashas room.
Mama, why have you locked Aka in, what if she needs something?
But Mama told me that Aka didnt need anything any longer. That Aka had
died
According to Mama, she died very quietly. As if she faded away. She wheezed
a bit, then a bit more and went quiet. But before that, on New Years Eve, she
was very poorly, and Mama kept going over to her all the time. I was sleeping,
but through my sleep I heard someone moaning in distress.
Mama and I have been left alone. I dont have anyone else apart from my
Mama Lena, and she doesnt have anyone apart from me.
Now I have to take better care of Mama than ever. After all, shes everything
to me. If she dies, Im done for. Where will I go on my own? What will I do?
And Mama has almost nothing but her spirit keeping her alive now. Her spirit is
strong. She knows that she mustnt collapse, because she has me
8/1. Things are very hard for Mama and me. There are still two days left to
the new ration period on the 11th of the month, and they wont give us anything
on our cards either at my canteen or at Mamas. So for these two days we have
to live on nothing but the plate of soup that Im entitled to. Of course, we can
take 3 meat rissoles too, but we still dont know if there will be any rissoles
What a bitter disappointment: today I stood in the street for 3 hours in a queue
for wine, and when there were only 8 people left between me and the door, the
wine ran out. I just got frozen right through for nothing. My feet got so cold that
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I blubbered as I walked home. I couldnt stand still any longer, I felt that if I just
stood there, I would fall down and die
10 January. The end of the first ration period for this month. But the shops
are as empty as ever. People still havent been given the food for the second and
third periods of last year.
Were getting weaker every day. Mama and I try to use up as little energy as
possible, we sit or lie down most of the time. Its a very good thing that school
isnt operating at present. I dont feel like studying, when the life is barely
glimmering in me.
Our school holidays have been extended to the 15th, but they say theyll be
extended even further. I dont know the reason why this is being done, but in any
case, it couldnt possibly be more timely.
Im very worried about Mama. How must she be feeling, if Im so weak that
Im already beginning to stagger? Its absolutely awful, Im not exaggerating,
when I sit down for a long time and then want to stand, I really have to strain my
muscles to get up. And when I get out of bed to squat over the chamber pot, my
legs buckle and refuse to hold me up. Outside in the street I try to walk fast and
cover the distance I need to go in a single dash, because if I slow down, I start
staggering
Yesterday Auntie Sasha told us about an invention of hers. Perhaps its
something that will save our lives. This is what its about.
Yesterday Mama went to see her about something and came back happy and
joyful. Apparently Auntie Sasha gave her some broth jelly to try, made out of the
finest kind of carpenters glue, and she gave Mama a slab of the glue, so that we
could try it too. Mama immediately set to work. She boiled up some water, about
two soup plates full, and dissolved the entire block in it, then she boiled it all up,
poured it into plates and set them on the windowsill. At 6 oclock in the morning
we woke up and saw that our broth jelly was ready. Both of us liked it very much,
especially me. And when we added a little bit of vinegar, it was wonderful. The
taste of meat jelly, it feels as if you could find a piece of meat in your mouth at
any moment. And it doesnt smell like carpenters glue at all. This broth jelly is
completely harmless, in fact its very nutritious.
After all, the finest sort of carpenters glue is made from the hooves and horns
of farm livestock. And some people buy the feet and hooves of young animals
especially, dont they, and make stew and broth jelly out of them. So now Mama
and I have an immense opportunity to obtain additional food without our ration
cards.
They have exactly the same glue in Mamas theatre. Just recently she
requisitioned 4 kilos of it from the store for her work, thats approximately 20
 192

slabs, and one slab is three platefuls. Mama will try to requisition more of the
same kind of glue, and well have a months supply of delicious, nutritious broth
jelly, eating one plate a day.
But as the saying has it, necessity is the mother of invention, and Ive already
thought up other elaborate ways of using this jelly. If you add some fruit butter,
syrup or wine, or something else of the kind, to a plate of glue while its still hot,
when it sets youll have a super wine or fruit-juice jelly, and with fruit butter or,
even better, jam, if you put lots of it in, you should get a kind of fruit jelly, that
is, a sweet block that you can cut with a knife and eat with tea
29/1. I havent written for ages. I just cant find the time for it. For two days,
the 27th and 28th, we havent had any bread. Almost none of the bakeries had
any. They say the reason for the bread shortage is that the pipes burst at the bread
factory because of the severe frost.
Whatever the reason, weve been left without bread for dinner for 2 days,
living on nothing but the soup from school and the broth jelly. Mama has got
so weak she can hardly even walk. But, what a blessing, yesterday instead of
bread I was given good wheat flour, 975 g, and Mama has really come back to
life. We immediately made thin flour soup and flat cakes. If we cant get any
bread tomorrow, well take flour again. Today its turned a bit warmer and its
snowing. The water has come on in No. 17. I queued up there today and got
water. The frost has been so bad just recently, we were getting water from a hole
in the ice on the Fontanka.
I dont know if well survive. Those two terrible days have really laid Mama
low. She has got really weak, but her spirit is strong. She wants to live, and she
will live.
8/2. Yesterday Mama died. Im all alone now
11/2. Today they gave us more bread. This morning the woman caretaker
and I took Mama to Marat Street.
We took Mama along the same route that Mama and I took Aka along a
month ago. And just like that time, when we were taking Mama today there was a
blizzard and then, in the afternoon, there was sunshine. Afterwards the caretaker
and I went to the bakery. I got 600 g of bread and gave her 300. Then I went to
school and got a plate of millet soup and a portion of millet porridge with butter.
I came home, sawed up lots of firewood, heated up my dinner, ate some bread
and felt that I didnt have the strength to do anything else. I wanted to go for
water to wash the dishes, but today has probably exhausted me so badly, not so
much physically as emotionally, that I absolutely cant do anything else at all.
Yesterday I sold 6 blocks of glue at 15 roubles a block. I got 90 roubles. Now I
have 99 roubles and 60 kopecks. It turns out that they wont give me anything for
 193

the room. Ida Isaevna will bring me 100 roubles, thats all. Ill give Ida Isaevna
50 roubles back for the little stove.
Yesterday I heated up the large stove and it was plus 12 degrees in my room.
The stove was red hot almost right up to the top. Tomorrow Ill get 600 g of
bread, just imagine! I cant do anything else now, Im going to bed. Tomorrow
is a new day. Its so hard to be alone! Im only 17 years old, after all. I have
absolutely no experience of life. Whos going to advise me now? Whos going
to teach me how to live? Im surrounded by strangers, no one has any interest
in me. Everyone has their own worries. My God, how am I going to live on my
own? No, I just cant imagine it. But life itself will dictate what I must to do, and
then I have one person who is near and dear ro me Zhenya. Shell help me,
Im certain of it. But first I have to get to her.
Mama
13/2. When I wake up in the morning, at first I cant grasp that my Mama
has really died. It feels as if shes here, lying in her bed, and shell wake up in a
moment, and the two of us will talk about the way well live after the war. But
then the terrible reality takes over. Mama isnt here! Mama isnt alive any longer.
And Aka isnt here either. Im alone. I simply cant understand it. Sometimes I
fall into a frenzy. I want to howl and scream, bang my head against the wall and
bite people. How am I going to live without Mama
5/3. Its Womens Day soon. The weather is sunny and frosty. They havent
increased the bread ration yet. When I think about everything that Ive been
through, it really terrifies me and Im glad that the most difficult times are over.
I survived and Im the only one out of three of us still alive. If the improvements
in the food supply had come even two weeks later, then I would have followed
Aka and Mama to 76 Marat Street. 76 Marat Street. Oh, what an ominous
address. How many thousands of Leningraders have come to know it! Im still
alive and I want to live. To do that, I mustnt stay here. I have to get to Zhenya
in Gorky.
Yesterday Raisa Pavlovna, my neighbour, passed on to me a postcard that was
brought from the housing rental cooperative, along with several letters. I dont
know how this postcard ended up at the cooperative. It turned out to be from
Zhenya, from 19 January. Zhenya writes that she is very concerned because she
hasnt had any reply and she has written so many letters already. And the address
is Mogilevich Lane, Gorky, and like a fool, I wrote to a completely different
address, the old one. Thats why my telegram never reached her.
My plan of action now is this: Ill send Zhenya a new telegram, and then Ill
try to get to Gorky. To do that Ill go to stay with Kira and Galya. If I stay here,
it will be really tough for me. Its very hard for me to work now, Ive got really
 194

weak, and if I stay an unemployed dependant, theyll grind me down with their
labour conscription. Spring will start, it will get warmer, the sewage will melt,
therell be a lot of work to do, they might even herd people off to the cemetery
to bury the dead bodies, and work them to death there too. No, Ive got to go
to Zhenya No, no, I have to leave! Ill write a telegram like this: Im all alone
now. Aka and Mama have died. Can I come to you? Reply quickly.
Im the only one left alive. Aka and Mama have died. Ive got very weak.
Aka and Mama died of starvation. Life is very hard. Ive got weak. Zhenya!
Can I come to you?
Aka and Mama have died. Zhenyusha, can I come to you?
It breaks my heart when I start remembering Mama. It still seems to me as
if Mama has just gone away for a short while on business of her own and shell
be back soon. I want to eat so badly. Are they really not going to increase the
bread ration? Im so sick of dragging out this half-starved existence, and as
for working, I couldnt survive working now, Ive got very weak. I must go to
Zhenya, Zhenya is my only salvation.
Mama, sweet Mama, you couldnt endure it, you died. Mama, sweet Mama,
my dear, sweet friend. My God, how cruel fate is, you wanted to live. You died
courageously. You had a very strong spirit, but unfortunately a very weak body.
Mama, you died, you got weaker every day, but there wasnt a single tear, or any
complaints, or any groans, you tried to keep my spirits up, you even joked. I
remember that on 5 February you got up. While I was running round the queues,
you made lots of firewood. After lunch you said calmly that you were going to lie
down and rest now. You lay down, asked me to cover you with my coat, and
and you never got up again.
On the 7th you didnt even get up for the chamber pot, and the worst thing,
the most hurtful, is that on those last days, 5, 6 and 7 February, Mama hardly
even spoke to me at all. She lay there, with the blanket right up over her head,
very severe and fastidious. When I flung myself on her breast with tears in my
eyes, she pushed me away: You fool, why are you bawling? Or do you think
Im dying? No, Mama, no, the two of us will still go to the Volga together.
Well go to the Volga, and well make pancakes. First lets take a trip to the
potty. Come on, pull off the blanket. Right, now lower my left leg, and now the
right one, splendid. And I lowered her legs off the bed onto the floor, only when
I touched them it was terrible. I realised that Mama didnt have long left to live.
Her legs were like a dolls legs, just bones, with something like rags instead of
muscles.
Oops-a-daisy, she said in a jolly voice, struggling to get up herself. Oops-
a-daisy, come on, lift me up like that.
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Yes, Mama, you were a person with a strong spirit. Of course you knew you
were going to die, but you didnt see any need to talk about it.
I only remember that on the 7th, in the evening, I said to Mama: Kiss me,
Mama, sweet Mama. Its so long since we kissed each other. Her severe face
relaxed and we snuggled against each other. We both cried.
Mama dearest!
Leshenka, the two of us are so wretched.
Then we went to bed, that is, I went to bed. After a little while I heard Mama
calling me.
Alesha, are you sleeping?
No, why?
You know, I feel so good, so easy now, tomorrow Ill probably be better. Ive
never felt as happy as I do now.
Mama, what are you saying? Youre frightening me. What has made you feel
good?
I dont know. Well, all right, sleep well.
And I fell asleep. I knew Mama was going to die, but I thought she would
live for another 5 or 6 days, I simply couldnt expect death to come the next day.
13/3. Frost and sun, O wondrous day1 I can feel the approach of spring
more and more keenly, the sunshine already has the warmth of spring, the snow
is steaming and the icicles are weeping, although in the shade the frost still nips
cruelly at my nose.
Im staying at Galyas place for the time being, taking care of her sick father
and helping as much as I can around the house. Today her father is feeling better
than yesterday, and Galya and I arent giving up hope that he will recover. He
has problems with his stomach because of his bad nerves, and he is very weak.
Galya and Alik go out at 8 oclock in the morning and come back at 6 oclock in
the evening. Im alone with her father all day long. He sleeps most of the time.
Im left to my own devices and I do whatever I
18/3. Last night Galinas father died. Such a good man, so kind
10/4/42. How very long it is since I wrote! Not since 4 April. A lot has
happened in that time. Ill just mention briefly that during that time I very nearly
left to go to Zhenya, but I was just one day too late. Evacuation has been halted
now and it will only be renewed when Lake Ladoga is free of ice. All that time, up
to and including the 6th, it was easy to leave, simply by registering on the same
day. I only found about this on the 6th. That day I went to the evacuation centre
for the first time and registered. There was only a very short queue. I decided to

1
The first line of Pushkins poem Winter Morning.
 19 6

register for the 7th and leave the next day. But when I found out that you could
only register on the same day, and I could only register for tomorrow the next
day, I dropped out of the queue, because I couldnt leave on the 6th, I didnt
have anything packed. But I decided not to put off leaving even for a single day
and leave the next day. I decided that today I would sell what I could, pack at
night and go tomorrow to register for the 5 oclock train
I didnt sleep at night and by morning my things were packed. And I decided
that I would go to the canteen to be there when it opened and spend as many of
my grain coupons as I could.
And that was why I didnt leave I joined the queue at 5 oclock and I was
78th. If they had been registering anyone on that day, of course I would have
registered and left, but again they werent registering anyone. We stood in the
queue all day long, and they announced that there wouldnt be any registration
today, and they didnt know when there would be. But the most desperate ones,
the ones like me, who had already sold absolutely everything, packed their things
and been paid off from work some had even handed in their ration cards we
decided to stay until the evening, come what may. Maybe there would be a few
free places left on some train or other. But then they made a loud announcement
that evacuation had been completely halted temporarily because the warm
spring days had begun and the latest trains were seriously overcrowded. There
was nothing left for us to do but leave.
I staggered out into the street and barely managed to drag myself home. It
was a warm, sunny spring day. In the sun it was plus 13. There were deep rivulets
flowing along the streets. The sparrows were chirping merrily, and red-winged
birds were honking in the blue sky. But none of this brought me any joy, it only
made me angry. If there was at least a slight frost, perhaps I would have been
able to leave. What a disappointment, I had sold everything, turned my entire
room upside down and, most importantly of all, Id received the long-awaited
telegram from Gorky: Come. Zhenya. Nyura. Id already said my final goodbye
to Leningrad, and suddenly: there, take that! And now Im back on 300 g of
bread, my grain coupons have all been cut out.
Well, whats to be done? Its my destiny. Well wait for May
13 April Just think of it! Today is already 13 April. April, spring. All of
nature is waking up. But I dont even see nature. Just you wait, Ill go away to
Gorky, its even warmer there, the sky there is blue too, and the sunshine is the
same as here. Just imagine, Ill see the real Volga. Ill be able to stroll along the
bank of the Volga. Volga, Volga! New impressions, new people to meet, a new
life. Oh, I long to get away from this cursed Leningrad as soon as possible. Of
course it is a wonderful, beautiful city and Ive grown very attached to it. But
 197

I cant even bear to see it any longer, let alone love it. The city where I have
suffered so much grief, where Ive lost everything that I had. The city where Ive
been left a complete orphan. No, all my life Ill recall the name of this city with
a shudder in my heart. Soon, Ill leave here, and I hope forever
I packed my things today. I packed and repacked them a hundred times,
until eventually they were the way I wanted. Two items: a suitcase and a bundle,
and in fact the bundle can be put in the suitcase, and then Ill only have one
item. I put all the utensils for eating in the suitcase too, and theres still some
free space in it. But Im not going to fill it up, who knows what I have to put in
there. Bread, sausage, or some other foodstuffs. After all, just imagine the way
everything has turned out, its hard even to believe it at first. I was left alone
and Im leaving for a different city, at 17 years old. Its frightening and sweet
as well. Sweet, because now I feel something that Ive never felt before. I feel
complete freedom, freedom of thought and of action. Im not bound to anyone
by anything. I can do whatever I want. Im going through a very important
moment in my life right now. I have to choose for myself how to act and what
path to follow in life, choose once and for all. I can stay here, get a job and live
on my own in my own room. Its very tempting. But I cant bear this loneliness,
being surrounded by strangers who are indifferent to me. No. no. If I were a bit
older, perhaps thats the path I would have chosen. But I dont feel completely
grown-up yet although, of course, Im not a child. No, I feel that its still too
soon for me to live completely independently, I still need someone elses help.
And then, I want to cuddle up against someone. I want someone to replace at
least some of the care and love I was given by the person that fate has taken away
from me so heartlessly.
I know I wont be alone at Nyura and Zhenyas place, I wont be a stranger.
I mustnt be any hindrance to them or make any kind of demands on them. I
realise that very clearly. Ill only be joining their family temporarily, Ill earn my
own money and pay it into the common kitty.
And in time I must try to get my own room and live independently without
bothering anyone. What good times those will be! Come what may, I must live
to see them
20 April. Today is a truly wonderful day. Not April, but genuine summer. Its
hot in the sun, and its 15 degrees in the shade. And theres a warm breeze. After
11 I went to a tearoom, bought some bread and drank two glasses of strong, hot tea
with the bread and the remains of the jam. Then I went to the canteen. Theres a
young girl there, Katya, who cuts out the coupons, a really good-hearted person,
my coupons arent really suitable, my address is too far away, but she serves me,
shes very kind, and everyone loves her for that. In the canteen I had a plate of
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soup and I took the meat course. I really enjoyed that liver. Its so delicious, a
good-sized piece costs 1 rouble, and they cut out the coupons for 50 g of meat
and 5 g of butter, and theyre right to do that, because they give a tablespoonful
of genuine meat sauce with each serving of liver.
From the canteen I went home and left a little piece of liver and the left-
over bread there before going for a walk. I went as far as the Colossus cinema,
bought a ticket, and at long last I saw Champagne Waltz. A wonderful film. I
suddenly wanted very badly to live in luxury for a while, like the characters in
this film, to surround myself with the same kind of brilliance and comfort. To
amuse myself just like them with music and dancing, all sorts of outings, and
various amusements. Thats the life, isnt it, luxury, beautiful women dressed
in the very latest fashion, well-groomed men in well-tailored suits, restaurants,
entertainments, jazz, dancing, glitter, wine, wine and love, love, endless kisses
and wine. Noisy, clamouring streets, luxurious shops, shiny cars, advertisements,
endless advertisements. Advertisements everywhere, advertisements on all sides,
advertisements glittering, spinning, glaring. Roaring din and hubbub, joyful
squealing, an absolute whirlwind, and it all has a rhythm of its own.
This war has torn us away for a long time from all kinds of amusement. And
after all, if truth be told, just before the war we had started imitating the Americans
in many ways. In very many ways. We Soviet people are very fond of everything
foreign. After all, the truth is that we dont have anything Soviet of our own, we
have borrowed everything from foreigners. We like noise and glitter, we dress
according to the latest word in fashion, mostly American. The majority of our
shows and amusements are American too. And jazz. Our young people are such
great jazz fans. All these various foxtrots, tangos and songs about love in every
possible style. And advertising had come to play an important part in our life,
especially just recently. Advertising to music on the radio in the form of little
jingles. And our streets were exactly like the streets abroad. Clean and orderly,
policemen at every turn and countless numbers of gleaming cars. Trolleybuses.
Brilliant, glittering shops with an abundance of various different goods. This war
has thrown us off balance for a long time. But I am firmly convinced that when
the war is over, little by little things will go back to the way they were and well
start improving our life again, following the foreign, especially American, style
Tomorrow Ill be left without any bread. Well, Ill get by somehow. This
evening the anti-aircraft guns keep roaring away for some reason, and at times
the clatter they make is absolutely appalling.
Tomorrow somethings going to happen!
22 April. Today my heart is so heavy, so terribly heavy. I dont know why,
but the anguish is gnawing and nibbling away at me. My God, Im surrounded
 19 9

by strangers, no one but strangers and not a single person near and dear to me.
Everyone walks by indifferently, no one even wants to know me. No one cares
a thing for me. Spring has arrived, yesterday we had the first thunderstorm, and
everything is carrying on as usual, and no one apart from me notices that Mama
isnt here. That terrible winter carried her off with it. Winter has gone and it
wont be back soon, but Mama will never come back to me. Dear, sweet, beloved
Zhenya, please understand how hard it is for me
When will I see my relatives? When will I finally sit down at the dinner table
with the feeling that I too belong here, Im not a stranger, and eat together with
the others, not just watch them eating? Dear God! Vouchsafe this mercy to me.
Let me reach Zhenya, see Lida, Seryozha, Danya and Nyura. O Lord. Do this!
I implore you!
30 April Ive decided to write my diary in a new form now. In the third
person. As a narrative. It will be possible to read that kind of diary like a book.
1May 1942 Lena remembered May Day last year. She got as far as
Borodinskaya Street with her school and got stuck there. Then it started snowing
so heavily that the street instantly turned terribly wet, with mud and slush.
Gradually the street emptied. Lots of people scuttled off back home then. And
thats not surprising because they were all dressed for spring, the women in
light coats, the men and boys in just their jackets. Lena was wearing a light coat
too, and no galoshes, but she ran home and put on her fur coat and galoshes.
She remembered that when she got home her mother was sitting there, sewing
something, and Aka was baking doughnuts with raisins in the kitchen. Lena was
in a great hurry, but her mother managed to persuade her to wait for a while,
and Lena ate the first hot doughnuts. And Aka gave her a few raisins to take with
her. Yes, what good times they were. But Lena didnt appreciate that then. It
seemed to her that a life like that was the usual thing. And things couldnt be any
different. It seemed to her that there was nothing special about the fact that she
had her Mama and Aka, and they absolutely doted on her. Everything for little
Alyonushka, as they used to call her. Who did they give the best piece to, who did
they pour the soup for first? Alyonushka. But Alyonushka didnt appreciate it.
And it wasnt until she lost both Aka and Mama that she really appreciated
the way all her life used to be. What wouldnt she have given now to bring that
time back! But it couldnt be brought back, she would never see Aka and Mama
again, except in her dreams.
Now, if she managed to reach Zhenya, she would treasure everything that
reminded her of family life like a precious jewel. The mere fact that she would
have the right to sit down at the table with Zhenya and Seryozha and pull a plate
over to herself, that one, simple fact would be supreme happiness for her.
20 0

Yes, fate had taught her a lesson she deserved, although it had done it very
severely. And now, as she pondered on all this, Lena told herself: Let it be a
lesson for the future, now you will value every crumb, know what everything is
worth, and it will be easier for you to live in the world
7 May Lena sat down to darn her stockings, when suddenly there was a
knock at the door. She opened it and a slim young woman of average height
came in, wearing glasses, a brown fur cap with earflaps, boots, and a padded
jacket and trousers. Do you recognise me? she said with a smile. Lena looked
and saw that it was Verochka, Vera Milyutina, her Mamas comrade and friend.
Lena let her through into the room, sat her down on the chest and sat down
beside her. Vera didnt stay with Lena for long, but in that time they managed to
tell each other a lot. Lena told Vera briefly about everything. About how they had
lived that winter, first the three of them, and then without Aka. And then Mama
had died. Vera understood Lena very well.
You poor girl, youve been through so much. But never mind, you wont
have to suffer much longer now, soon youll go away, God grant that everything
goes well on the journey, youll get to Zhenyas place and a new life will begin
for you.
Lena was so pleased that in the whole of Leningrad at least one person dear
to her had shown up, a friend of her mothers.
Vera was concerned about whether Lena was travelling alone or with
someone else, but when Lena told her that she wasnt going alone, but with her
friend, a classmate from school, and the friends mother, Vera was reassured.
She asked: And what does Ninas mother look like, is she strong, not weak at all
is she? You need to choose travelling companions you can rely on. In general,
Vera questioned Lena thoughtfully about everything in detail. Was she taking
many things with her? Did she have money for the time being? Did she have
any friends, was anyone helping her? She earnestly requested Lena to be wary of
eating a lot for the first two days, and not to kill herself with some stupid kind of
porridge.
Apparently on the journey many people became ill or died simply because
they threw themselves ravenously on food and really stuffed themselves, and the
effect of that on a body exhausted by prolonged starvation was fatal.
Make a superhuman effort, but restrain yourself, especially when it comes
to bread. At the station theyll give you a kilo of bread, and some people eat it
that very day. Dont do that. An acquaintance of mine died on the journey, only
because he gorged himself, he gorged himself on millet porridge and ate a lot of
bread. Restrain yourself and grab other peoples hands to stop them. After all,
its such a stupid shame, nothing could be more stupid than a death like that. To
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survive the bombing and the shelling, to survive a thousand deaths and die from
an extra plateful of mush.
Veras words made a very strong impression on Lena. No, she didnt want
to die in a stupid way like that and she promised herself to follow Veras advice
and abstain from the tempting abundance of food for the first two days. No, she
didnt want to die because of some porridge or other. Lena felt that it would be
excruciatingly difficult, but somehow she would have to overcome this obstacle

16/5/42 (from 15 May). The beautiful weather has arrived now, sunny and
warm, 16 degrees in the shade. The grass is green and the buds have swollen up.
Spring is in full spate. But the Germans remain vigilant. Shelling every day, air
raids several times a day.
The shelling was terrible right now too. Lena was walking along Nevsky
Prospekt. She wanted to exchange the 200 g of bread that she had bought for 90
roubles for some grain. As soon as the shelling started, Lena crossed the road
and took cover in a slit trench in the Catherine Garden. Shells continuously flew
over her head with a melodious whistle, one after another. There was a constant
rumble of explosions. It was really rather frightening. Even the little birds that
twittered all the time fell silent. In a momentary lull, Lena glanced out of her
shelter and was astounded by the picture that met her eyes. It was amazing how
used people had grown to the fact that their lives were in danger every moment.
It was as if no one had even noticed any shelling. There were trams travelling
along, cars rushing by, people walking along, people sitting calmly on benches.
Everyone was getting on with his own business, and Lena actually felt rather
ashamed: theyd think she was a madwoman, clambering into a trench like that
and she went home. Anyway, the shelling had already started to die down and it
finally stopped altogether
25 May. In a few days I shall leave. The first train is going today. Kisa said its
quite possible that I could leave tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But Ive
got so weak at this stage that its all the same to me. My brain doesnt react to
anything any longer. Its as if Im living in a half-sleep. Im getting weaker and
weaker by the day, my final reserves of energy are draining away by the hour.
Absolutely no energy at all. Even the news that Ill be leaving soon doesnt make
any impression on me.
Honest to goodness, its simply absurd, after all, Im not some kind of
invalid, not some old man or old woman, Im a young girl and I have my whole
life ahead of me. Im happy, arent I, after all, Ill leave soon? But anyway, I look
at myself, at what Ive become. An indifferent, dreary look in my eyes, a walk
like some totally feeble invalid, I can barely hobble along and I struggle to get up
202

three steps. For the sake of an extra piece of bread or anything else edible I was
prepared to walk to the ends of the earth, but now I hardly even feel the hunger,
I dont feel anything at all. Ive got used to it, but why am I getting weaker and
weaker with every day? Can it really be true that man cannot live by bread alone?
How strange
 204

Yury Utekhin brought it to our editorial offices in person a notebook so small that
it would fit even onto a childs hand. At first we thought we were looking at a record kept
by a young boy who had been orphaned, since a large part of the notebook was filled with
descriptions of what was served for breakfast, dinner and supper in an orphanage. However
it turned out that eleven-year-old Yura and his brother Alik were only in the orphanage
because their parents, who were doctors, worked practically round the clock. Their father
was a surgeon in a field hospital and their mother was a district doctor who went round
peoples apartments, rendering assistance to the exhausted inhabitants of Leningrad.
But in their older sons imagination the hunger that tormented him night and day night
gave rise to visions of the feast that the Utekhins would lay out on their table after the war.
Hams, slabs of cheese, bottles of lemonade, bread rings, halva, biscuits he drew all of this
in his diary, and beside each item was the price and the quantity that would be bought on
that happy day when he would finally be able to eat his fill
The Utekhin family survived the war. After the blockade was lifted, Yuras mother was
evacuated to the Novosibirsk region together with the orphanage, and she worked there as a
doctor. His father returned from the front safe and sound after the Victory was won.
Now 85 years old, Yury Aleksandrovich Utekhin lives in Moscow, and is still working! He
became a Doctor of Technical Science and devised unique methodologies for the correction
of squinting and shortsightedness without surgery, by using spectacles of a special design.
His brother Alik, who is mentioned in the diary, became an extremely well-known surgeon
in his home city, and still lives in St Petersburg.
 205

23 December 1941. Theyve been giving us 125 g of bread a day for more than a
month now.
25 December 1941. I woke up early this morning and found out that theyve increased
the bread ration and now theyre giving us 200 g a day. What joy! Uncle Sasha died on
the 15th.
20 January 1942. Soon it will be a month since theyve been giving us 200 g of bread
and no other food at all, we live in the orphanage, Mama and Auntie Tanya live together
and they take us home at the weekend. Were waiting for the bread ration to be increased,
and hoping.
20 January. 12 noon. Theyve increased the bread for orphanages by 50 g. Now
theyre going to give us one and a half pieces of bread at dinner and theyll give us 250 g
of bread a day. If only they would increase the bread ration soon in the city, for Mama
and our relatives.
24 January. What great joy, when I woke up this morning I found out that theyve
increased the bread ration. Now Mama gets 400 g a day and Auntie Tanya gets 300 g a
day. In the orphanage they give us 250 g of bread, the same as the children in the city.
29 January. This is the second day theyve given us a piece of bread for breakfast,
with sweetened tea, nothing to go with the bread. Water is a really bad problem. They
have to fetch it from the Neva on a sledge. There are long queues for bread. Today Mama
stood in one for 5 and a half hours to get 400 g for herself and 300 g for Auntie Tanya.
Alik has had diarrhoea for 6 days now, he goes to the toilet 10 times a day.
A diary of life in the orphanage starting from 20 January 1942.
20 January. Today weve been living in the orphanage for exactly 2 months. For more
than 3 weeks theyve been giving us bread with jam and tea without sugar for breakfast . . .
21 January. For breakfast, a piece of bread (you can cut it into two pieces) with
butter (10 g), one and a half sweets and a mug of tea without sugar.
For dinner, a piece of bread (only half the size of the one for breakfast), a plate of
millet gruel (nothing but water) and millet porridge (like the last time).
Supper the same as yesterday, only a smaller piece. The millet porridge has a strong
smell of paraffin and they only give us a tiny little bit.
22 January. Breakfast the same as yesterday, butter (5 g).
For dinner, a piece of bread, noodle soup (seven noodles), millet porridge (2
tablespoons). Supper the same as yesterday, I got a crust.
22 January. Uncle Sasha was buried
24 January. For breakfast, a piece of bread, a little piece of butter (5 g), one and a
half sweets and tea with no sugar.
For dinner, a piece of bread, noodle soup (two spoonfuls of noodles), two little
pancakes of black rye flour and a spoonful of sugar. For supper, a piece of bread, an
omlet (a little rye flour pancake), a chocolate sweet and a mug of tea.
 20 6

Today, 24 January, they increased the bread ration in the city, Mama gets 400 g a day
and Auntie Tanya gets 300 g. An inspector came to our orphanage today
26 January. For breakfast, a piece of bread, a little piece of butter (5 g) and sweet tea.
For dinner, a piece of bread, noodle soup (I didnt get a single noodle) and 2 little
pancakes.
For supper a piece of bread, an egg, a chocolate sweet (the oil was burnt) and tea with
no sugar. They delivered some chickens from the depot. They let us have 2 chickens for
soup for 90 people at lunch.
27 January. For breakfast, a piece of bread, a little piece of butter, a sweet (not
chocolate, it was like soap, disgusting), tea without sugar.
For dinner, a piece of bread, noodle soup, two pancakes (made with white flour).
For supper, a piece of bread, an omlet (a pancake the same as for lunch), a sweet
without chocolate, a mug of tea without sugar. Today they gave us disgusting sweets for
breakfast (there was no chocolate on them and they tasted like soap).
28 January. For breakfast, a piece of bread without butter and sweet tea. For dinner,
a piece of bread, fish soup with noodles and just noodles. For supper a piece of bread,
one and a half pancakes, a chocolate sweet and a mug of tea.
29 January. For breakfast, a piece of bread without butter, a mug of sweet tea. For
dinner, a piece of bread, noodle soup, one and a half tablespoons of noodles.
For supper a piece of bread, sour kissel (only one finger thick). While weve been
here 9 people have died
31 January. For breakfast, a piece of bread and sweet tea.
For dinner, a piece of bread, flour gruel, flour porridge (like yesterday).
For supper, a piece of bread and sour kissel. Its the weekend tomorrow, were going
home before supper
5 February. Today for breakfast they gave us a hard little brick of sour bread. Breakfast
was a piece of bread and a mug of sweetened tea.
For dinner, a piece of bread, pea broth (absolutely nothing but water) and pearl
barley porridge.
For supper, a piece of bread and a mug of coffee. The soup today didnt have even a
trace of peas on the bottom.
6 February. For breakfast, a piece of bread and a mug of sweet tea.
For dinner, a piece of bread, pea broth and buckwheat porridge (only a very little
bit).
For supper, a piece of bread and a mug of coffee.
7 February. For breakfast, a piece of bread and sweet tea.
For dinner, a piece of bread, pea broth and buckwheat porridge.
For supper, a piece of bread.
 207

Yura and his brother lived in an orphanage

because their mother and father worked day and
night in the besieged city and couldnt look after
the two boys.

In his diary Yura drew pictures of the dishes cherished by his feverish imagination in the
besieged city, as if this food that was so far out of reach could become a reality on the
pages of his diary and relieve his torment for at least a second
Photo from the archive of Yu. Utekhin.
 208

Nursery School No. 237 taking a walk.

At least 400,000 children of various ages were
trapped in the encirclement.

In the first winter of the siege the city was covered with deep snow and the trams, the main form of public
transport, were not running. For the exhausted people this often meant death: it was impossible for them to
walk several kilometres to the bakeries or to their work. And so in spring 1942 Leningraders came out into the
streets of the city to clear away the snow.
TASS.
 210

We know very little about Mayya, the Komsomol organiser in School 221 in Leningrad,
in whose passionate diary resounding words about the Motherland, duty and Communist
youth are punctuated by brief entries on everyday matters that are terrible to read against this
inspired background, for instance, the entry for 25 January 1942: The water isnt running.
The radio is silent. The telephone doesnt work. There isnt any fuel in Leningrad. Its 35
degrees Celsius. She was a pupil in the eighth class of a middle school in the Kuybyshev
district and her father worked on the railways. That is all that they were able to tell us at the
Central Archive of Historical and Political Documents where this diary was kept for many
years.
We know that Mayya survived the war. Of her adult life as Mayya Aleksandrovna
we know only that she took up science and was seconded out of Leningrad. The final
threads leading to her run up to the early 2000s, when she lived in the town of Pushkin, on
Magazeynaya Street. After that the trail breaks off.
 211

1 October 1941. Its October now. For three months my motherland, my

family and friends have been battling against the impudent Fascist invaders who
have violated our happiness and our freedom
I work at the factory now, specifically Im on full-time night duty. Our factory
security team consists almost entirely of young people: they are fine girls, I was at
the trenches together with them, and so they call us battle-hardened
We came back from the trenches at an anxious time for Leningrad, at the
moment when the bombing of the city began and German troops were launched
into assaults on its suburbs, on 1215 September 1941.
And at that time, when I worked on the shop floor, I often used to hear talk like this
from the women: The Germans wont touch me, Im not Jewish, and my husbands
not a communist. And as for him being in the army they conscripted everybody,
didnt they (he obviously wouldnt have gone on his own, who wants that?).
And they tremble for their own skins, for their own precious lives, abandoning
their motherland in its moment of difficulty traitors, cowardly remnants of the
petty bourgeoisie, hiding away in their burrows. These insignificant people told
me themselves that they used to own flats and that the women never knew work,
they said the whole family lived comfortably on one income (the husbands).
Well I understand perfectly well how that came about. But there are some people,
although only a few, who listen to these women who call themselves workers and
spout rubbish like this when you start to object: Dont you go standing up for the
communists, they betrayed us; if the Germans come, youll see, almost everyone
will go over to them. (By their calculations, it ought to happen in the next two or
three days.) Theyll go over to them because it makes no difference to a worker
whos in power; you might as well work under the Germans as under the Soviet
regime. Its actually better under the Germans, since it would be possible to earn
money and buy what you want, without any queue. Stuffing their faces and dolling
themselves up in all sorts of junk thats what they sell their motherland and
their own human dignity for; thats what the ideal of their life is, be a lackey or
a servant, but well fed. The swine! Theyre tired of working, so now they want
German benefactors! I contrasted my own parents with these devils. My father,
who was a boy apprentice before the Revolution, but under Soviet power, for
which he fought all his life, he graduated from the Stalin Industrial Academy; my
mother, who from the age of seven worked for people as a nanny or farm-hand,
and only received middle-school education under Soviet power. And they squeal
about a woman never knowing work. All those damned philistines want is to stuff
their bellies and make idle talk, nothing else interests them
22 November 1941. Nana spent yesterday evening at my place and we worked
on our homework An alert And Nanka and I are slogging away at the character
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of Sobakevich1. (He wolfs down sides of mutton with buckwheat groats, cabbage
soup and so on, and our appetites running wild, its absolutely impossible to study,
but we dont surrender!)
Suddenly crash, bang boom. There was such a blast that Nanchik and I
jumped up off our chairs and the light went out.
Adolf dug up a bomb from somewhere and dropped it. Literally dug it up,
because hes got a thing about bombs. The day before yesterday, for instance,
there was no alert, clearly there werent any bombs, and our boys dont let him
through anyway. Hes so furious at being given a roasting on the front lines, hes
bombarding the city day and night with artillery, and our district in particular.
Nanchik and I went to the bomb shelter and stayed for a while, but we got fed
up sitting there and went to the housing cooperative office. During this alert our
medical team bandaged a casualtys wounds. After the alert I went with Nanka to
see her home, but a bomb fell on the corner of the Griboedov Canal and Nevsky
Prospekt, so they wouldnt let us go any further than Brodsky Street and Nanchik
stayed at our place.
November 1941. For more than four months now we have been battling against
Fascism, a cunning and powerful foe. How dramatically the situation has changed
in comparison with the first days of the war and how many things I have had to
reassess, Ive had to take a new look at many things. Its funny to remember, or
rather strange, that only recently Zoyka and I were dreaming of seeing the war,
hurrying to grow up so that they would at least take us to deliver cartridges to the
front. If fact, we imagined the whole war in a romantic light, without the practical
necessities that now exist.
A bold attack by our Red Army men with thousands of tanks and clouds of
planes covering the sky, a single mighty blow and the Fascists bolt ingloriously,
completely routed by our overwhelming pressure. And all of this has to happen on
the border.
And only very recently, in the last third of June 1941, I was afraid that the war
would pass me by, that is, that it would be over in a few days and I wouldnt see
anything, that I wouldnt have to deal with all its difficulties, which I could only
imagine very vaguely, and so it seemed interesting, if only for just a minute, to be
like the people who fought in the Civil War, people I genuinely envied; to help my
country in some way at least, to feel and to prove that I was not treading the earth
in vain either, and that my pair of hands had been of service.
I was very angry that Mother didnt wake me for the air-raid alert on the night
of 23 May 1941. I really wanted to hear at least the anti-aircraft guns firing. I heard
about the villainous raids by Fascist bombers on Kiev, Sebastopol, Zhitomir and
1
One of the landowners in Gogols Dead Souls, characterised by his appetite for prodigious amounts of food.
 213

other cities while I was at the hospital. I didnt believe it until I heard Comrade
Molotov himself announce it on the radio with my own ears
The next day, 23 May 1941, Zoika and I wondered what we ought to do. We
dashed to the Komsomol District Committee, and they sent us to check on the
delivery of call-up papers, along with the turn-out of conscripts at the registration
points. So we spent the whole day rushing round housing cooperatives and battling
with building managers.
Then we clambered through the attics of our building, dragged abandoned
furniture out of there, fixed it up and used it to furnish the first-aid post and the
gas shelter. When we got home, we found out that people were needed to load sand
and we, not just Zoya and I, but the other boys and girls too, decided to go.
We worked like that for several days under the instructions of the housing
management committee and the building managers office. I was summoned
to school. It was for a Komsomol meeting. We decided that the girls in our
Komsomol organisation must join the voluntary peoples militia and the boys
should volunteer for enlistment in the Red Army. We set about implementing this
decision immediately
But disappointment lay in wait for us the girls, that is. Early the next morning
Tanya Braude and I were at the doors of the Kuybyshev District Russian Red Cross
Society. But alas, they cruelly informed us that there were already enough people
at the front without us, and we needed to grow up a bit first. A fine state of affairs!
You have to grow up a bit! Were 16 or 17, and they advise use to grow up a bit!
And even though Tanya and I kicked up a real fuss, it didnt do any good at all.
One kind soul advised us to go to the military commissariat and said that from
there they would at least send us to work in the military hospital. But that hope
of ours came to nothing too. Then Tanya and I decided to go directly to the head
of the hospital. They sent us to the trade union committee. The chairwoman of
the committee greeted us politely, so we felt there was a glimmer of hope. We
didnt have to explain a lot to her about why wed come, since we werent the
first ones to come to her, and lots of boys and girls were already working in the
hospital (when did they ever manage that!). She told us they had stopped hiring
two days earlier. Tanya and I almost burst into tears, we were so disappointed. We
begged her to take on at least the two of us; she said she understood us and would
really like to help us But what could she do, if there were thousands like me and
Tanya? Eventually we were given a little hope she told to us to call back in five
days or so.
During those days there were a few more projects that we also failed to carry
out. We decided not to waste any time, if nothing came of the job at the hospital
we ought to try to organise a trip to a collective farm, where working hands were
 214

needed. So we go flying into the District Committee again, and they send us to the
Regional Committee. But alas we were too late there as well! What the hell is all
this? We were terribly upset. Theyd sent the last group off just a few hours earlier,
and that day the order had been issued not to send school pupils. Out of spite we
ate a choc ice each and went home. Lyubka went on this journey of sorrows with
us too. We decided that anyway we wouldnt just stay at home when everyone was
working.
So now Zoya and I are at the factory. Just like grown-ups. The factory works
on military contracts and were glad to be helping the front in some way at least.
Tanya is working too, at the Communications factory (a factory with a military
production number).
4 December 1941. I was on duty in the school on Wednesday night. During an
alert, they sent me to the bomb shelter; I checked the first-aid kit. I met Natasha
Dementeva there. She told me that if she got her hands on Hitler, the first thing
she would do would be to make him learn the history of the Communist Party in
ancient Greek.
14 December 1941. Hoorah! At last were driving back the Germans right along
the front! Rostov is ours. Yelets is ours. Tikhvin is ours. The plan for a siege of
Moscow has failed and were driving the Germans back. Our forces have occupied
Solnechnogorsk, Mikhaylov, Klin, Yasnaya Polyana and Bogorodsk. The advance
is continuing right along the Western and North-Western fronts. Our Red Army is
taking back hundreds of villages and towns a day
16 December 1941. At school the cold is appalling. We still have light, but lots
of the boys and girls dont. And even we often sit there with a candle. When I get
home its absolutely freezing and I want to eat, but I have to wait while Mother
heats up the stove; its more than just a stove, its our salvation. Our ally winter
sears us with such intense frosts and deep snowdrifts that I wish she wouldnt
bother. Because of the snow the trams arent running, so they had to introduce
labour conscription for snow-clearing.
My mother runs around the whole day long, organising everything in the
building managers office and at home. A real bundle of energy. Wherever she
goes, there is joy, warmth, calm, perseverance, confidence, the desire to work.
19 December 1941. Papa came. He walked from the Kirov Plant, since the trams
werent running. He arrived full of joy and told us they had begun preparations to
start up the plant. But on Wednesday, the day before yesterday, he came and told
us that he had eaten roasted sparrows for breakfast. Starting from today they dont
have to live in at the plant any longer. On 24 December the plant should start
working; of course, theyre going to mix the bread with some kind of wood stuff,
pulp, but at least it will be better than nothing
 215

20 December 1941. No matter how hard Leningrad tries to conceal its wounds,
we sometimes have to acknowledge the implacable force of hunger. People struggle
against it obstinately, with tears of bitter resentment, with dogged fury, trying to
stifle this thing that prevents them from living and fighting. And the most terrible
thing is that they have no way to help each other. The weak just keep on and
on dying, and those who are left alive grab at the slightest chance to survive the
struggle and not fall victim to it, they strain with their final ounces of strength
25 December 1941. What happiness! Theyve increased the bread ration.
Instead of 125 g, now we get 200 g. The mood has improved so much people have
simply taken heart again. It was getting really terrifying: people were dying one
after another on all sides, and people beside me were ready to go the same way.
You strain every last ounce of strength not to kick the bucket. And then this joy!
Joy! Now theyll infuse at least a little bit of life into us. People say theyre going
to give us chocolate for the New Year, and theyre already giving us wine and rye
flour. And that means the siege will soon be over.
Our dear, darling soldiers! Theyre driving the German swine away from
Leningrad, driving them further and further. Roll on the day when they drive
them right off our land.
In the most difficult and arduous moments I think of the soldiers, its no easier
for them than it is for us, but they dont lay down their arms, do they? Theyre cold
and hungry too, and theyre fighting battles all the time. But they have found the
strength to defend Leningrad. There has never been a single Fascist in Leningrad
and there never will be
12 January 1941. Its -30 degrees Celsius! Somethings going on at the front
near Leningrad. The Germans have built lots of concrete gun emplacements and
its hard to force them out of those. But nonetheless they are being forced out,
surrounded and killed. If not today, then tomorrow, everything is bound to change
abruptly, the circle round the Germans has been drawn really tight. One more
blow, a crushing blow, at their lairs, and theyre done for, they wont get away.
Theyre just too insolent altogether. They scuttle off in womens skirts and bonnets
and take the railway with them (the tracks and the sleepers), and as well as that,
they take the door knobs and latches. But the land is one thing they cant make off
with, and theyll dump what they stole along the way in any case
Ah Leningrad, sweet Leningrad
The frost is horrendous, its cold in the apartments, water freezes, theres no
light. Theyre saving electricity for the factories and plants. The limit per room is
fifty watts and were lucky if they give us any light. The trams arent running. Either
because theres no electricity, or because the tracks are smothered in snow and
everything has frozen, or perhaps for some other reason. You rarely come across a
 216

vehicle. Everythings frost-bound. The Leningraders clear the tracks and the frost
freezes them solid again. People walk to work, they walk tens of kilometres after
first eating a snack of a 75 g piece of bread with a cup of hot water (theyre lucky
if they have that), without any sugar of course, they havent given us any for ten
whole days.
Today is 12 January, the second ten-day ration period, but they havent given
us any food for the first ten days, apart from meat, and they havent even defined
the standard ration allowance. During the third ten-day period of December they
didnt give us any butter, but they gave us a little wine and thats all, almost no
one managed to buy anything, there wasnt enough. Theres no food at the depots.
At all the canteens they feed people with thin rye-flour gruel and only rarely can
you find noodles. So the general situation is that there isnt any food. They serve
oilcake soup, and even Leningraders stomachs, which are used to so many things,
find that hard to digest, and sometimes there are rissoles made of horsemeat or
intestines. The shops are empty Only the bakeries come to life in the morning,
when Leningraders, starting on their working day, hurry to get their charge of
energy for the entire day their daily ration of 200 or 350 g of bread. Bread is
their only salvation, apart from a plateful of thin flour gruel. Yes, it is hard to
endure this sort of thing. Hunger cuts people down, their freezing corpses lie in
the streets, trucks collect them and dump them in mass graves. In every building,
day after day, people die. For instance, in our building more than 20 people have
died during the famine. Sick people die more often, but a good number also die of
malnutrition. Its terrible And its hard to help anyone. I feel as if Ill turn up
my own toes if things carry on like this, but thats not possible
Papa and Vovka have fallen ill. Papa was walking 14 km a day, and he was
poisoned by oilcake soup as well, so we just barely managed to pull him through,
Mamas giving him some kind of tincture of garlic and herbs. Hes pale, and as
gaunt as a skeleton, at first he didnt get out of bed, but now at least he drinks tea
with us. But Vovka has flu, and on top of that his ear has started aching and he has
a temperature. And sweet Mama is as thin as thin could be, she often feels dizzy
from fatigue and lack of nourishment, but even so she keeps on working, working,
working.
I went to the healthcare clinic on 9 January to get them to send a doctor for
Papa I couldnt get through on the phone on the 8th but he still hasnt come
yet. Its altogether outrageous! If we can just hold out for a few days but then
whats going to happen?
In the morning we drink tea, eat a piece of bread with salt and mustard and
rusks that weve only just dried. I go to school at 11 and they give me two portions
of flour soup, Mama dilutes it with water and puts croutons in it (today we used up
 217

our last coconut oil, already boiled up with mustard, to fry them). In the evening
we drink tea with bread and rusks made out of the bread of our daily ration which
we collected the day before.
To get a few noodles for Papa, since he couldnt eat anything (he felt nauseous),
I went to Valya in the canteen on the Petrograd Side in a vicious frost during an
artillery bombardment
I wish they would break through the blockade soon. Leningrad is mustering
every last ounce of strength and holding out by thinking of the front
14 January 1942. -32 degrees Celsius. The Gostiny Dvor has been burning all
day since the morning. I only barely managed to get some bread (very white). Its
after four now. I went to the shop it was empty; to the bakery not a single piece
of bread. Mama has fallen ill, but nothing will keep her at home, shes working
with a high temperature. Tomorrow I go to school. I havent prepared any of my
lessons and I dont feel like doing them. The schools cold and you freeze while
youre waiting to get dinner. Never mind sitting through six classes, just sitting
there for an hour is hellish. Fanya Abramovna called me over and said we have to
develop the joint work of the teachers committee together with the Komsomol
committee. How can we possibly do anything in this cold? Ive already tried many
times, but theres not much that can be achieved. But she goes on about the plan,
the plan, and clarifying goals. Everythings been clear for a long time. Its up to the
school. If were going to have lessons from 15 January 1942, we need a warm room
immediately for doing our homework and holding the necessary activities. At the
present time there isnt a room like that in the school, so there can be no question
of any work outside school hours. Aagh, the cold, the cold, it stops me working.
Im in a lousy state of mind.
23 January 1942. Tanya Braude is attending school too. And honestly, looking
at her makes me want to work. Shes the same kind of little fool as I am. No
matter what, regardless of any difficulties, she wants to live and work, she wants to
help our motherland in some way, to finish the school year with excellent marks
and then Oh, dreams, dreams! The two of us will definitely go to work on the
collective farm, and well persuade the other boys and girls to go, in the first place
well put pressure on the Komsomol members. If we dont manage to achieve our
goal, well turn all the district committees and regional committees upside down,
and we will achieve it. After all, were Young Communists, arent we? We must,
we can and we will work. And we have to start working immediately, right now,
at school. We have no right to waste a school year, on the contrary, we must help
the others to complete it successfully. That is our absolute priority, and we must
achieve it
Now a little bit about Leningrad.
 218

Its still the same, calm and austere, but things have become more cheerful
and joyful, thanks to the fluffy snow that has fallen, the glittering sunshine and
the vehicles driving around the city: its more enjoyable to glance into the shops,
where butter has appeared on the shelves and they have issued 50 g to everyone,
and sugar, they have issued 100 g of that and, by the way, we have already eaten
it. From day to day Leningraders are expecting an increase in the ration of bread,
which is baked wonderfully well, only more would be better. Theyre waiting to
be given more grain and butter, and a lot of other remarkable things. People say
everything is being brought for us. I was really delighted when I saw fresh eggs,
even though theyre not intended for me.
They go on and on killing the Germans and soon, probably, theyll kill all of
them who have ensconced themselves here around Leningrad.
24 January 1942. Today Leningrad beamed. Everyone is joyful and smiling. A
news announcement! Theyve increased the bread ration, theyre giving out flour
and sugar! Golden hopes have been aroused! But its hellishly cold in Leningrad,
40 degrees Celsius. People freeze to death the moment they simply sit down to
rest or stop moving. Today Avgusta Ivanovna almost carried home a half-frozen
woman from her work, and we only just managed to warm her up and pull her
through. She was going to walk to her mothers place at the harbour all the way
from the Moscow District Soviet! The poor girl. She already had throat spasms,
she was frozen right through and terribly distressed. Mother kept warming her with
flat irons and hot coffee. Valerian drops calmed her down a bit, and she went to
sleep. And in the morning she was a completely different person, a Leningrader
who had returned to life and to work
26 January 1942. The water main isnt working, theres no electricity, the
radio is silent. Its -39 degrees. The whole day long, like Papanins men on the
ice floe, we melt snow to get water, and the water has a burnt smell and a smoky
kind of colour (obviously because when the Gostiny Dvor was burning the snow
absorbed the smoke). Other people go to the Neva or the Fontanka to get water.
There wasnt any soup in the school canteen, since there wasnt any water. There
isnt any bread in the bakeries, or if there is, there are thousands of people queuing
for it. I just barely managed to get some.
27 January 1942. All the delights of life at your disposal! To get water we go to a
hole in the road opposite the Passage. There must be a fire cistern there, I suppose
I scoop it up with a dipper, and first I have to stand in the queue as well, and
afterwards I can hardly pull out my frozen-in feet. While I carry the water home, it
freezes. Theres no water supply at the bread factories and they arent baking bread
at full capacity. Its very hard for the bread factories to obtain water. As a result,
we wont have a single piece of bread today, and other people didnt have any
 219

yesterday either. This is the second day there hasnt been any bread in our bakery.
We boiled up our last flour. Weve drunk some coffee and now to sleep.
28 January 1942. What happiness! Joy and salvation bread! I got some
today. I stood in the queue from half past three in the morning and came home at
twenty minutes to one in the afternoon. I queued without any hope, but otherwise
we would have died. Only our own demands, our insistence, stubbornness and
initiative (the citizens themselves went with the director to the bread factory
administration and the depot, we thought they would give us flour at least) have
given us life in the full meaning of the word bread. We managed to get bread
today, but thats all what will happen tomorrow if Leningrad doesnt get water?
Yes, non-stop pleasure, round the clock! For three days we havent heard whats
happening in the world. The radio is silent, there arent any newspapers
11 June 1942. June! Spring and summer have arrived. Life is blossoming, taking its
course. It only seemed for a while to be freezing, falling asleep, struggling desperately
as it finally lost everything, but it didnt freeze! It didnt fall asleep! Life has triumphed!
The struggle between life and death was decided in those terrible February
days. It reached its culminating point and life honour and glory to it! won!
It won and, slowly but stubbornly, confidently and insistently, began growing
stronger, destroying everything that hindered it from winning its right to triumph
and predominance in nature, in people and their existence.
What is this strength that saved us, that supported us in our painful moment of
arduous struggle? It is you, my Motherland! It is you, our dear soldiers and Soviet
people, it is you, the Ice Road, it is you, the all-embracing faith in our rightness,
the moral support of our comrades, the remarkable example of Bolshevik willpower
in the all-conquering Stalinist advance! Forward to the stated objective, to victory!
Forward, forward and only forward!
You will not forget, Leningrad, the time when people came to our aid, they
came and laid the Ice Road, the road of life, to prevent the enemy from choking
us in the ring of the blockade, the ring of starvation. It was for you, Leningrad, that
they laid the road across Lake Ladoga, through the bitter cold, the blizzards and
the squalls of enemy fire. And they laid it, they came to you, a gloomy, cold city
with your freezing inhabitants straining every last nerve, collapsing from hunger
and cold, but still going to work for the front, for the Motherland then, at the
time when it seemed that the enemy had already achieved his goal of slaying you,
it was then that they came to you: they came to you chest-deep in snow, replacing
each other every five steps, they came to you across the lake and laid the Ice
Road, they saved you, they breathed vital strength into your dying limbs
7 February 1943. Im working as the secretary of our schools Komsomol
organisation.
 220

Now it is 1943 already. What storms of events will it bring as it hurtles through
our life? that was what we asked on New Years Eve.
And here it is, the first, long-awaited and desired spring a breach in the
blockade of Leningrad erupted into our hearts and into our lives on 18 January.
And it began, began again, our headlong, unstoppable advance on the fronts, the
final, total rout of the enemy. Step by step, metre by metre, our land is shaking off
the bestial pack of Hitlerite hounds in bloody, hard-fought battles.
6 July 1943. I havent written in my diary for a long time. But I have learned
very, very much during that time, during these few months
I dont understand how a school student, a near-adult, a young man, can fail
to be a Young Communist in our time. Can it really be true that How the Steel was
Tempered1 and hundreds of other living textbooks of youth have still not reached
everyone? Why is it still not clear to everyone that from the moment we are born,
our place in life as the next generation, our place as the soldiers and builders of a
new life, is pointed out to us by the history of our motherland, by our (her) past,
present and future?
I consider it my foremost duty and a great honour, which I must justify, to
stand in the ranks of the Leninist Young Communist League. This is what is lodged
in my heart, and I try to tell the boys and girls about it as simply, expressively and
clearly as possible.
I cant stand clichd propaganda and forceful recruitment into the Komsomol,
I consider it disgraceful that, unfortunately, it still exists on an almost official
basis. It is with an aching heart that I have accepted certain boys and girls into the
Komsomol, literally under pressure from the Komsomol district committee
28 August 1943. Today I received a letter from Viktor. Im so glad! Glad to
receive the letter as a whole and especially several lines at the end of the letter,
those golden words in which he says that his acquaintance with me was not just an
ordinary meeting with someone new, but something very close to his heart, and
the feelings that were awoken in him are not like the feelings of a boy for a girl, but
fraternal. Yes, precisely fraternal, comradely feelings, and that was the right way
to say it, because its the truth. And I wouldnt have believed any other words and
would only have been disillusioned with one more person. And now I value him
more, his integrity and simplicity, combined with pride and an honest, constant
striving to grow intellectually, politically and spiritually. There is something in
him that is distinctive of people who live on the Volga; I think it is romanticism
and practicality, a love of nature, breadth of character and directness, honesty, a
lack of haste and a respect for others, and also a lack of fear to admit a mistake,
the ability not to conceal, but to eliminate ones own shortcomings, tenacity. Well
1
Novel by Nikolay Ostrovsky (1936).
 221

then, Viktor, study, my dear, thank you for not making me feel I was mistaken
in you. Ill see what happens next. Another thing I liked about you was that you
didnt ask me if I was writing to anyone else or not. Well be good friends, as we
were, until we meet again, even more so now, because we have understood each
other and perhaps our friendship will be stronger than passion and greater than
love.1 And the guarantee of its strength lies in our honesty and trust in each other.
9 September 1943. What joy! Town after town, region after region, every day
they return to the family of Soviet towns and regions. Every day, every hour our
very own Red Army liberates thousands of Soviet citizens from the yoke of bloody
maniacs, and tens or hundreds of kilometres of our own dear Russian land, our
central regions, our golden Ukraine, our south! Westward! To the Dnieper, to
the Berezina river! Nothing, nothing can, could or ever will be able to break our will
to victory, our will to the happiness of free, constructive labour, of creative activity
and leisure, our will to pitiless vengeance and the battle for our Motherland. We
are strong in our unity, in our great goal of the liberation of man and, above all, in
our Motherland.
10 September 1943. Today is 10 September 1943, today it is two years since
those terrible, menacing and stressful days when the glow of Gatchina burning
and the raging tongues of flame from the first high-explosive bombs dropped on
Leningrad burst into our life as the implacable truth of impending danger
At this time on 10 November 1941, at about 11 oclock in the morning, I was
standing with a spade by an anti-tank ditch at the foot of Ravens Hill and looking
up at the autumn morning sky, blue with sparse, light, feathery little clouds
I remembered that the day before two shells had exploded in the lake, that
three days earlier before my very eyes a fast-flying German plane had broken
in half, burst into flames and gone somersaulting downwards, that the narrow-
gauge railway had been dismantled and two guns had been brought to Krasnoe
Selo to test the earth-and-timber gun emplacements that we had built. All this was
merely a reminder that we were surrounded by war, but not something that made
us instantly grasp the reality of the situation. Like thousands of Leningraders, I
dug trenches and built gun emplacements, but I didnt believe that they would be
needed, that they would become one of the obstacles on the approaches to the city,
I didnt believe that war would become the daily reality of our life, that it would
force me to grow up. I never doubted that they would bomb Leningrad, but at that
time I didnt believe that there would be Germans within 12 kilometres of the city,
I didnt believe it then, on that ordinary morning which an hour later became my
first baptism of fire. Yes, it was an hour later when 36 German bombers droned
past above us, methodically swooping down on the gardens and houses of Krasnoe
1
An approximate quotation from the song Friendship by A. Shmulyan.
 222

Selo, on the people with spades in their hands who were digging a barrier against
the loathsome, creeping vermin. On Ravens Hill front gardens burst into flames,
the unharvested rye blazed, the land of Krasnoe Selo groaned and reared up, ready
to meet the enemy in the Russian fashion.
We went back to Leningrad, to the city, and we knew that the German would
not get beyond this land, it would become a deadly borderline for him. And if
he stepped onto it, he would find nothing there for him but death, death and
more death. But he would never enter the city, the city of our freedom, pride
and happiness, we would never retreat from the gates of our city by a single step,
we would not retreat by even half a step. That was how it had been before, how it
would be now and how it would always be.
 224

Valya was a pupil in the seventh class of Middle School 239 in Leningrad. One of the
teachers at the same school was Ksenia Polzikova-Rubets, whose siege diary was published,
including the diary of her pupil Valya, which she had copied out by hand After that,
there are only riddles. The St Petersburg Archive, from which we received the seventh-class
pupils diary, tells us that Valya died in June 1942, while mentioning that the information
is not from a reliable source. And at School 239, which worked during the war, where the
memory of the siege pupils is preserved, A and F was told that only one of Valyas classmates
was still alive, and she did not remember either Valya, or the school, or the siege, and
Valentina herself had not attended the school reunion for the last thirty years Does that
mean that she did attend before that? Where does the truth lie, what mistakes have we
made? Valentina Karlovna Peterson is probably no longer in this world. But her diary lives
on, with its harrowing lines, written in Leningrad under siege.
 225

9 October 1941. And so, I begin my description of ongoing life and events. Perhaps
tomorrow lessons will start at school. I am waiting impatiently for the day I have yearned
for, the day when we begin our studies.
Im bored. My only amusement is the Irish setter Silva. Theyre going to go to the
Communications Workers Club to watch a film, but its pointless, I cant go, the
public there includes too many types that I consider undesirable.
15 October 1941. In the time that has gone by I have been through a lot. We decided
to kill Silva and how to do it. Aleksandr Petrovich Kuklin decided to do away with her
like this: first stun her with a hammer and then slit her throat, but it didnt turn out
as they anticipated, to be precise, Silva started whining loudly, and to avoid a great
commotion, A.P. didnt kill her.
We wanted to kill her, on the one hand, for the meat. And on the other hand,
because theres nothing to feed her with. While we were trying to kill her, I got terribly
worked up. My heart was pounding as hard as if it was about to jump out of my chest.
Then we thought up a way out: we decided to kill cats and feed her on their meat.
A. P. killed one, I skinned it, gutted it and cut it into pieces. And the other cats tore
the flesh of their own relative into pieces with such relish that it was amazing to watch.
I decided to try a piece of cat meat too. I fried it with pepper and garlic, and then
started chewing . . . and well now, the meat turned to be rather tasty, Id say no worse
than beef, and it tasted as if it was chicken.
20 October 1941. I understand what hunger is very well now. I didnt have a clear
picture of this feeling before. I feel a bit sick when I eat cats meat, its true, but since
Im hungry, even something disgusting seems delicious. And Im not the only one
who is so hungry, am I? Whos to blame for that? Its those cursed German fiends!
I was never spiteful. I tried to do something good for everyone. But now I hate those
bastards because they have mangled my life and mutilated the city. The city is emptying.
Everyone is being evacuated, but I try to persuade my mother to stay. Shes very afraid
of air raids, but Im not at all, and not because Im brave, I simply believe that they
cant kill me. Today my friend Anya M. was torn to pieces by shrapnel from bombs. I
feel sorry for her, she wanted so badly to see the end of the war. She and I often took the
night watch in the attic at school. She was a good girl. On the 15th the Germans took
Melitopol and a new front opened up the Kalininsky Sector. I was in the Kalininsky
region not long ago. I have a lot of friends there. The German swine commit atrocities
everywhere where they are in control. How are things in Turchinov could they really
not have been evacuated in time? There havent been any letters from them for ages.
3 November 1941. Today we went to school. How glad I am. They promised to feed
us dinner and give us 50 g of bread a day without ration cards. The teachers are all new.
The Russian teacher is obviously a good, kind woman. The algebra teacher is strict, but
she explains things well, the physics teacher is the same, she has strange lips, theyre so
 226

plump. And the history teacher is like a puppet on strings, when the strings are jerked,
she jerks.
Ive forgotten everything. But I have to pull myself together and study, study and
study, as Lenin said.
They want to put my poor Silva to sleep. Its a shame.
I caught two cats, but Kondratich scolded me, about Silva and about the cats. They
foul the place. I dont know what to do. I keep quiet, but Im hungry.
8 November 1941. Yesterday was a holiday. The 24th anniversary of the October
Revolution. The Germans didnt bomb us, against all our expectations.
Im still studying at school. For geometry I got good, and in Russian the teacher
keeps encouraging us. She says the war will be over before the New Year. But is it true?
Things are very hard now.
A. P. Kuklin is furious again that theres nothing to eat. But how are my mother
and I to blame for that? Theres only one hope, well have to pickle Silva. Thered be
enough of her to last a long time. But I feel sorry for her.
What should I do?
12 November 1941. Theyve stopped giving us dinner at school. Everything is for
ration cards. The situation is grave. Tomorrow theyll probably reduce the bread ration
and well get 150 g each. You can hardly get anything at Mamas work either. The
teachers advise us to tighten our belts. The city is encircled. We pickled a cat. Silva
is still alive. Well probably pickle her as well soon. There arent any letters at all from
Alik. Now Im going to Mamas work for dinner. Will she feed me or not? I dont know

13 December 1941. At last Ive found some free time to set out my thoughts and
wishes.
How many changes have taken place in this period of time. How many disasters
have occurred. How many painful minutes have been endured.
Someone stole my poor Silva and ate her. People talk about cats now as a delicacy
(but, unfortunately, there arent any). Alexander Petrovich has proved to be a disgusting
individual: irresponsible, extorting everything he can from everyone, only concerned
about himself, an idler, hypocrite, sneak and gossip (basically with all the negative
qualities). Ive seen through him, and my mother has seen through him. But how can
we get rid of him? Hes very malicious and could kill someone for absolutely no reason
at all (so they say).
Were planning to run away from the city (not because were afraid of the bombing,
but to get away from him, to get rid of him). Mamas sick, shes faded away to a shadow.
She keeps trying her best for me and my stepfather, she doesnt finish up her own food,
sometimes she cries quietly. I know shes worried about Alik, there hasnt been a single
letter from him. I try to support her. Will she really not survive? Im afraid to think about
 227

it. Our dear, sweet neighbour Pelageya Lukinichna has gone away. Im glad for her and
with all my heart I wish her happiness for her kindness. Shes really an exceptional
person. She promised to plead our case for leaving. I want to abandon everything. To go
away to the south and start living a quiet, peaceful life there, like a hermit.
18 December 1941. Not long ago I wanted to leave the city. To go away and live
like a hermit. Now thats stupid, isnt it? What about my studies? After all, Ive studied
in school for half a year. Am I right to hate my stepfather? I cant make that out. Why
am I concerned about everyone, but hes only concerned about himself? I think its
disgusting. Before the war he was different, wasnt he? He wanted to take the place of
my father. Oh, if only I could, Id think up an appalling death for Hitler. Everything is
his fault. Hes to blame for the war, and the war mutilates people.
25 December 1941. Today is an exceptional day. Theyve increased the bread ration
by 75 g. Now Im supposed to get 200 g and Mama gets 200 g too. What happiness.
Everyone is so glad, theyre almost crying with happiness. My stepfather is unbearable
today. I feel ashamed to be insulting about him, but I cant take any more. He ate all his
own bread, then Mamas and mine. Todays increase doesnt exist for us.
I hate him. And I dont understand how its possible to do something so mean. And
Im hungry. The school term will end soon. Im worried about my mark for the Soviet
Constitution. I just hope I dont get poor for it. I go to school and people ask me:
How can you keep on? Well, what can I do? Its the same at home as at school I sit
there with a little paraffin lamp. At school at least they give us soup. Today there wasnt
even any paraffin in the lamps. We burned spills of wood. Its very cold, the ink freezes.
There are two or three of us sitting and studying in each class. The bread queues are a
problem, we have to stand in them and miss school.
29 December 1941. They say that happiness is not mans constant companion. Yes,
to some extent thats true, but today I have happiness. Im so glad. What about? Im
glad that my stepfather has died. Mr Kuklin. I waited so eagerly for this moment. I
hated him terribly. The hunger exposed his vile soul, and I saw him for what he was.
Oh, he was a real creep, as hideous as they come. And now today he has died. He died
this evening. I was in the other room. My grandmother came in and said: Hes dead.
I didnt believe it at first, and then my face twisted into a ghastly smile. I was delighted.
Yes. Delighted at his death, the death of a man who tormented and betrayed us. Oh, if
any one could have seen the expression on my face at that moment, they would have
said I knew how to hate ferociously. He died, and I laughed. I could have jumped for
joy, but I didnt have the strength. The hunger had taken its toll. I couldnt even move
about very well. Well, then, the thing I had dreamed about, the thing I had wanted, had
happened.
6 January 1942. Today there was a New Year party. And such a sumptuous one.
I wasnt expecting it. Of course, it was so cold that while we sat there watching a
 228

production of The Gadfly1 my legs got frozen stiff and I couldnt feel my toes at all.
After the show we were supposed to have dinner. We hardly even watched the play,
everyone was thinking about the dinner to come. Everyone had puffy faces, with white,
watery bags under their eyes, which glittered hungrily. Their feet knocked against each
from the cold. Finally, the show was over. The actors must have got really frozen. They
were acting in summer clothes and it was minus twenty in the theatre. The curtain
came down and everyone surged to the exit, to the canteen. They didnt give us dinner
straightaway, we had to wait for a long time on the stairs. It was even colder there
because of the strong draught. We all stood there, huddling up against each other, with
only one thought in mind: Oh, let dinner be soon! We stood there freezing for a long
time. Finally the doors opened and they let us in. The tables were covered with white
tablecloths, everywhere it was clean, but cold. The dinner was wonderful: they gave us
a plate of noodle soup, 150 g of millet porridge with sauce, 50 g of bread and 50 g of soy
jelly. We forgot about everything: the fierce cold and the pain in our legs from standing
for so long. Everyone devoured the food greedily and licked their plates eagerly. I got
home at six oclock, and my mood was spoiled immediately. Its cold at home, theres
no firewood, the water everywhere is frozen. Ill have to get some from the Moyka river.
I cant afford to be squeamish about it. Mama is lying down, unwell, and shes probably
hungry. Ive brought her 25 g of bread and 25 g of jelly. Shes very glad. Im glad too,
but Im still as hungry as a wolf.

1
Novel by Ethel Voynich (1897).
230

Nothing is known about the author of this diary.

 231

Dearest Mama,
Its 4 oclock, Im going out to the canteen. I didnt manage to tidy my room at all,
because when I looked at the clock, it was about four already. During the shelling I was
in the corridor.
Hugs and kisses. Shurik.
31/8 41. Igor came. For the birthday were preparing a production of The Czechs
Shall Be Free. It promises to be very exciting and interesting. Igor wrote it and Im
producing it. Mother found out that theyre giving chocolate on all the ration cards and
theyve increased the ration of sugar and sweets. Roll on the 1st. At about 12 oclock
the siren wailed and we went down into the air-raid shelter. There wasnt much gunfire.
All-clear. I went to bed with an empty stomach
1/11 41. Mama woke me up and gave me bread, two eggs and chocolate. She had
already managed to get everything except the grain, butter and sugar. At last I feel full.
Now Ill drink some cocoa and wait for the butter. I have to read a bit of Don Carlos,
Infante of Spain1. They announced on the radio that in the morning of the 2nd there
will be a performance of Cyrano de Bergerac2 at the Lenin Komsomol Theatre. It
would be good to see it, but probably Mother wont go or she wont get any tickets. An
air-raid alert at about 7. We went down. The all-clear came after about an hour and a
half.
2/11/41 Of course I wont go to the theatre. Perhaps Igor will come. And it turns
out that keeping a diary is not such a boring business as I thought. On the contrary, its
actually interesting. Ive made the eye-patch for Captain von Ginsberg. It would be
good if Igor came and brought the completed play. I dont know what to do about the
costumes. We need tall boots and trousers and where can we get those?
12/11. Igor left in the morning and I lay here, today I found out some bad news
theyre going to cut the bread ration. Were threatened with starvation.
15th. Its a very long time since I last wrote. Bombs fell into Nos. 55 and 51, but
they didnt explode. We had to go away for two days. Were thinking of staying today,
the bombs have burst, as they say. My hands are frozen, so its hard to write. We
received news that the Leningrad personnel department has sent an enquiry about what
happened to my father (they sent us a copy). Im very bored.
20th. Today I went to the theatre, a branch of the Kirov Opera Theatre. I watched
Eugene Onegin. Its the first time Ive ever been to an opera, I liked it a lot, although
they played without any scenery
30th. Mother gave blood. At the donation centre the procedure they have now is
this: someone who gave blood before this procedure has to have an examination and
give blood once (they mostly take type O) and that person receives money, dinner

1
Tragedy by Schiller.
2
Play by Edmond Rostand.
 232

(before the blood is taken) and, most important of all, a workers ration card. Someone
who is donating for the first time during the war has to give blood three times. After
that he can come every month and give blood and every month the donor will get a
workers card. If he comes to the centre for two or three months and they cant take his
blood, theyll give him a card anyway. And apart from all this he can get what they call
a sliding pass, which gives him the right to eat in all the canteens.
Since December theyve started giving everyone their ration cards (all of them apart
from bread cards which is very convenient). Before, it was hard to get everything,
there were always queues. This is the first day theyve given us electricity, we were stuck
in darkness for three days, there arent any candles anywhere, Grandad just barely
managed to get three candles from a church. This afternoon we found two lumps of
wax and a few pieces of some kind of substance that I found out contained stearin
Grandad and I made a wick, but we havent needed to use it yet. Weve run out of
matches, tomorrow well probably get six boxes (for the whole month). Theyre giving
out beer on the cards, 4 large mugs for workers, 2 for dependants, the same for desk
workers and damn all for children. We have one workers card, the second one is a
dependants and third one a childs, we should get 6 mugs of beer, but beer is hard to
get Mother asked a woman to help, on condition that she would give her two mugs,
and so well have four mugs (its not too late, theyve extended the cards for a few days).
There are alerts every day. Recently the Germans took Rostov-on-Don. Nobody knew
anything, then suddenly, on the 28th, they announced it on the radio. Several days ago
the Germans took the city of Rostov-on-Don, today our units surprised the Germans
by crossing the Don and commencing battle in the streets of the city and they have
forced the enemy out of Rostov
6th. They havent reduced the bread ration for this month. But they are giving us
less of everything else. Workers get 400 g of meat (for each ten-day period), dependants
and children get 100 g. We took meat jelly instead of meat (they give you three times as
much) and we had 1,800 g. We were going to boil up soup out of the jelly, but we just
ate it. Salt is on ration cards. Early yesterday morning we got a notification asking us
to present ourselves at the military commissariat at 2 oclock. It could have been one
of three things, that is: firstly about Father; secondly about money; and thirdly
and finally evacuation. It turned to be the third thing (evacuation). We can go to
Novosibirsk, 250 km by truck and the rest by train. They said at the commissariat that
it was dangerous to travel with Grandad (something could happen to the truck and
wed have to walk or run). Well have to travel at least a month and a half to reach
Novosibirsk, and we need at least 2,000 roubles. It will be quite something!

State Memorial Museum of Leningrad Defense and Siege.

 234

A chronicle of death, almost like the diary of Tanya Savicheva, only written by a boys
hand Unlike the frail Tanya, Kolya withstood hunger and cold and death and when left
an orphan at the age of 12, he became a son of the regiment and was sent to the Nakhimov
Naval School, and later became an actor in the theatre this is the brief note kept at the
Museum of the Defence and Siege of Leningrad.
We searched for Kolya Vasilev among the living and the dead. We didnt find him.
There is not much hope that now, having lived to beyond the age of 70, Kolya will
recognise his diary entries in our book. But after all, hope dies last. Just as it was in the
freezing city from which his voice reaches us
 235

27 January 1942. I went into town for bread, since they werent baking any bread
here in Lesnoy. There was no firewood or water. I went as far as the Vyborg Side. On the
way back I fell several times and I was slowly freezing. When I reached the market I met
Alka, a comrade of mine. He helped me get up and took me to the Svetlana factory. I
warmed up in the gatekeepers hut and carried on walking home. I fell in the gutter and
almost died, but then Mama walked by and carried me home. On the same day at 14.00
Papa died sitting on the bed.
28 January 1942. Sergey and Tonya Gusevs mother died and their neighbour
Kolyas father died. In March Tonka went into a childrens home. Sergey stayed at
home. He forged ration cards and lived like that. And the father of the woman next
door has died.
29 January 1942. Lyosha (my brother) has died at the age of 16. Early in the morning
at 5.30. He was ill and working and suffered a lot and thats why he passed away.
17 March. Shura Kulashkin has died of starvation. He was a healthy boy, a good
boy. But the hunger killed him anyway. 22 people have starved to death in our building.
22. March. An airman came for us, but didnt take us.
27 March. Mamas health is getting worse and worse.
31 March. Mama is lying down and cant get up out of bed.
3 April. At 4.30 Mama starts wheezing, shes dying. Its all over, Im all alone now,
Im going to the Yegorovs. I went into town for a parcel and Ive got back home already.
I slept at the Yegorovs place.
State Memorial Museum of Leningrad Defense and Siege.
236

Here and now we can barely even make out Kolyas features like
the events of those terrible eight days in his diary It is our duty
to make sure that they are not erased completely, leaving no trace.
Wherever you might be now, Kolya.
Photo from the archives of the State Memorial Museum of Leningrad Defense and Siege.
238

Nothing is known about the author of this diary.

 239

It was two months ago, I went to the bomb shelter with Mama and Mishenka
on a tram. We could barely squeeze into it. When we went in there, I thought it was
like a hospital, I wasnt expecting to stay there long and I even brought a book from
home. So that I wouldnt be bored. But I had to spend two and a half months there.
Life was rather boring and I was always hungry. At first I gave almost all my food
to Misha, but later I couldnt manage to give it away
I completely forgot to write where the bomb shelter was. The Neva, the Hermitage
building We were in a little niche. I could never even have thought before that the
four of us could live in such a little corner. The whole day long Mishenka and I were
alone. The light there was electric, there wasnt any daylight at all, the windows
were boarded up and covered with sand. Mishenka had pneumonia, so I couldnt
go outside with him and we stayed inside without any daylight at all, and Misha was
ill for two weeks. An epidemic of measles and scarlet fever broke out in our bomb
shelter and the children under three were inoculated against measles. Misha was
inoculated too, the jab wasnt very painful for him. Almost all the time Misha had
diarrhoea, obviously from the meat jelly. The jelly was made from pork skins and
it had hard pieces of skin in it that he couldnt chew up Since Mishenka had bad
diarrhoea, we couldnt give him any bread, because the bread was poor quality.
They gave us 125 g of bread, or instead of bread they gave us 75 g of biscuits. Thats
3 biscuits, and our Mishenka was already terribly hungry, he developed the habit of
shouting Give me something to eat or Mama, give me something. When Mishka
didnt have diarrhoea, I tried to feed him, I gave him my portion to eat and his
own portion for the whole day, I fed him all of it at once, but he ate it up quickly
and said More to eat. After that I didnt try to go on feeding him until he felt full.
Just recently I had started feeling really hungry, but then I gradually got used to the
hunger
On 10 December at 3 oclock Mama came to the bomb shelter, it was cold there,
we were wearing our coats, she told us to get dressed up quickly and started packing.
We bundled Misha up very warmly, wrapped him in a rug and a blanket, tied a little
chair to a sledge, sat bundled-up Misha on it and put string bags with the things we
needed for Misha on the sledge: his little trousers, stockings, shirts and suits. The
trams werent running, we went on foot, and pulled Misha on the sledge, very close
to home a car almost ran us over
Of course, when we got home we were all really delighted, but it was cold at
home too.
18 December is my birthday and we celebrated it really well, we opened a tin of
sprats and I ate about 300 g of bread! Mama and I went to the market and exchanged
200 g of bread for 400 g of oilcake, she added about three spoons of maize flour,
three spoons of sugar and some oats, and then we had very sweet griddle cakes.
 240

On 19 December Mama got some white spice cakes on our childrens ration cards,
theyre a great rarity, 8 spice cakes for 2 bread cards, and she divided one cake into three
parts and gave a bit to everyone to try, including me. This evening I was feeling very
hungry, since I had stayed up much too late, I took one spice cake out of the cupboard,
but it didnt fill me up and I asked Mama if I could have little bit of bread with mustard
seed oil, she said I could, and without even noticing I almost ate up my portion of
bread, the next day there was only a very little piece left. Mama was very annoyed that
I had eaten almost my whole portion of bread for the next day
Today we were very lucky. Lyuba got hold of a cat and Mama made a delicious pot
roast out of it, but just our luck, when we were ready to eat, the light went out and we
had to eat this delicious pot roast by the little flame of a paraffin lamp. But when we
finished it the light came back on. Its a pity there wasnt a rabbit (thats what we agreed
to call the cat) on my birthday. But unfortunately rabbits are very rare. We could never
even have guessed before that you could eat cats. Now every day more and more people
are dying of starvation. So far were holding on. Misha still keeps asking for food, but
they say that Misha and I have put on some weight at home.
Its 20 December, we have nothing sweet to go with our tea, sweets appeared in our
Mamas shop, she was delighted and took sweets on all the cards, they call them soy
sweets, the wrapper says Murzilka, the price is 10 roubles 60 kopecks, the same as it
used to be before for good soy sweets. But the sweets turned out to be almost impossible
to eat and they burned our throats very badly Of course at any other time I wouldnt
have eaten these sweets, it turns out that theyre made out of bitter oilcake, some sugar
is added to the oilcake, and the shape is the same as the soy sweets. Mama bought
me pictures of The Tale of Tsar Saltan1 and I stuck the pictures into the album that
Kirochka gave me for my birthday. Kira sketched a design for a shirt into my album. He
made it up himself.
25 December, were lucky today, theyve increased the bread ration to 550 for
workers and 200 g for desk workers, dependants and children. People say that from 1
January they are going to increase the bread ration even more. They didnt increase the
bread ration at all, we saved up some food for the New Year and boiled up lentil soup,
but by the evening I was so tired that I felt unwell, and we also had 1 tiny sprat and 2
crabs each, we drank mulled wine. Somehow the situation isnt getting any better at all.
On the contrary, now it has got worse, theyre not giving out any food at all in the shops,
but the norms have been announced. This is the second month they havent given us
any food, we have nothing but substitutes and 20 g of bread. Mishenkas hands are
swelling up from hunger Papa hadnt been here for a very long time, today he came,
all puffy and swollen, he walked an hour and thirty minutes from Mokhovaya Street to
get to us.
1
Fairy tale by Pushkin.
 241

Well replace our fathers at the factory lathes! this appeal rang out during the very first days of the siege.
And thousands of Leningrad children took their places at the lathes. These lads assembled machine guns.

During the first evacuation of JuneAugust 1941,

when the city was not yet encircled, many
Leningrad children were evacuated to nearby
districts of the region. 175,000 of them were
brought back into the bombing and the famine.
These are wounded children who were treated in
hospitals.
TASS.
 242

Were going to evacuate, Mama has already sold her fur coat for 1,500 roubles, 2
kg of sugar and 6 bars of chocolate. She sold the sugar and chocolate for 2 and a half
thousand Im very upset, Im afraid that Ill leave without seeing Papa
Today big Kirochka sent Mitya away, evacuated him. Our departure has been
postponed, Ive fallen ill, a temperature of 39 Celsius. Kirochka and Zoyechka have
gone, it was at 10 oclock in the morning. But I caught a cold standing in the queue
for soup in the canteen and the soup was actually very watery. This evening quite
unexpectedly Nadezhda Pavlovna came with Tosenka, and said that they were going at
11 oclock this evening, their departure documents have been finalised, Im very sorry
to part with them, but theyll be better off there, they have relatives they can go to out
there.
News, today on the radio they announced the ration norms: grain; they didnt
give much grain, but thats a good sign. Now they give out some kinds of food every
day, sometimes butter, sometimes sugar. But the rations are small Today I washed
Mishenka, and Mama and I are going to get washed. We probably havent washed for
a month, getting washed is really enjoyable. Big Kirochka has got a place in a clinic,
but he says hes quite hungry there and the portions are tiny. Mama has got a place in
the clinic. Our departure is put off until Mama and Kirochka recover a bit of strength
Of course we wont go anywhere, there are air raids and shelling here again. But the
food situation has been sorted out, this is the second month they have given out all the
food products, they even gave us tea, oh, how long it was since we drank tea, what bliss.
Mishenka has come down with scurvy, his little legs hurt, we cant touch them. On 3
May the schools open.
State Memorial Museum of Leningrad Defense and Siege.
 24 4

All we know about the Komsomol member Lyuda Ots, a pupil at School 11 in the
Sverdlovsk District are the circumstances of her death, written in by hand by someone
unknown at the end of the thick notebook of her diary, which was passed on to the Russian
weekly Argumenty i Fakty by the St Petersburg Archive.
Lyuda was walking up the main staircase she had gone up three stairs when a shell
shattered the wall of the building: five pieces of shrapnel struck her in the stomach and a
sixth in the ribcage. First they took her to the Housing Cooperative Office and only then
informed her mother. And that is all.
 24 5

16 November 1941. Almost a year since I picked up a text book. And that year is a
cursed year. It has brought us nothing but misfortunes. But I wont get ahead of myself
and will try to recall what has happened during this year
On 21 June I left for the dacha. To the same Kartashevka, to the same landlady,
but this time to a different, better room, and moreover not on my own, but with a girl
from our building, Tamara S. A glorious room, we settled in very comfortably. But the
next day we were shocked: Germany attacked us! My God, how villainous, how base!
First to conclude a treaty and then break it so treacherously. But of course, we didnt go
back home, we stayed. And we lived there until 14 July. During that time we saw many
interesting things. Lets start from the fact that our village lay along the main road. And
soon after war was declared an endless procession of tanks, guns and troops stretched
out along that road We greeted them, threw lilac and green branches to them. The
soldiers waved to us joyfully, caught the flowers and smiled. How we enjoyed strolling
alongside the main road with the troops moving on and on along it. And sometimes
columns of 4050 vehicles stopped in the village. And then the bustle began. Milk for
some, bread for some, just water for others.
But all this didnt last for long. Soon the distressing news began arriving, and then
refugees started driving past from around Luga, Pskov and other towns. And soon they
reached us too And we had to leave. It was a shame, but we had to. We came back
to the city. For a few weeks we hung about with nothing to do, and then Klara joined a
course for nurses and I started going to the school and helping there. Later I moved to
the Komsomol District Committee
Vitya came at the beginning of August. He had been promoted to lieutenant. He
went to Moscow, from where he was posted to Volokolamsk, and from there to Staraya
Ruza. He used to write to us all the time. But now we havent had any news from him
for more than a month. We havent had anything from Kolya since May. When Vitya
came, I didnt go to the District Committee for a few days. Then I started going less
and less often, and then I stopped completely. A few days later I started going to the
school, where I mostly stood watch. During these watches I talked a lot with Zhenya
Basakov from class eight. A really fine boy and the only one (out of those that I know)
who likes the theatre. Sitting in the attic of the school we chatted for hours about books
and the theatre. About ourselves. If only Nelya were still here. But on 8 August she left
for Kazan with her family. Before they left I spent two days at her place. She was sorry
to leave her beloved Leningrad. But we thought that everything would be all right.
But exactly one month after she left, on 8 September, we were given the sweets
for the first 10 day ration period of the month. At first a lot of things were on the
ration cards, but there were commercial shops where you could buy everything. The
allowances were high. Higher than necessary.) Well then, that was the day when they
bombed us for the first time. I was on watch at the school at the time. Together with Lena
 246

I. We were chatting, when suddenly we heard the anti-aircraft guns firing furiously. We
went over to the window. It was four or five oclock on a clear, sunny day. The shells
glinted so brightly in the sun. Suddenly we spotted a strange kind of smoke, yellow.
We went up to the attic and onto the roof. From there we saw the strange smoke very
clearly (as I discovered later, it was a smokescreen). And there were several large puffs
of smoke rising up against the background of that other smoke. There could be no more
doubt about it: it was clearly a fire caused by bombing. And that was the beginning:
frequent bombing and air raids, casualties, ruined buildings. Even worse, the enemy
had encircled us in the tight ring of a blockade. Ration norms started falling and now we
get very little. But the less we get, the longer well hold out. Well be hoping for things
to end well.
A few days after this gift Klara and I found work in the hospital as community
workers and were still working there now. The schools started working on 3 November.
But Klara and I only attended for a week. Its not possible to combine working in the
hospital with studying. And leaving the hospital would mean going without dinner, and
thats bad. You cant do much studying on an empty stomach. And Klara and I have
decided to work and carry on with our studies after the war
1 December. In the last two weeks a great deal has happened. Since 25/11 Klara and
I have been working in the Comintern Library. From today we receive a desk workers
ration card and a wage of 120 roubles. This week the Germans have been shelling the
city all the time with long-range guns. A shell hit building 19a beside us. The glass in our
top-floor windows was blown out. And yesterday we were at work when suddenly there
was such a loud blast! The glass just sprayed out of the windows! Something struck the
Red Cross building, across the courtyard from our library. Life has become hard. Every
day it just gets worse and worse. Of course, our boys have taken back Rostov-on-Don.
Good for them! But that doesnt make things any better for us. Whats going to happen
next? Will the Germans really come here?
This cursed war has turned everything upside down. All our plans and dreams have
shattered against that hard, cruel word: war! Damn it all, can this really be the end?
But I want to live! No, we will win, we shall be victorious, in defiance of everyone
and everything. We shall not perish. We cannot fail to win the victory because Does
it really matter why? We shall be victorious, full stop! If Leningrad falls, Moscow will
stand!
 247

From 20 November to 25 December 1941 the daily ration for a child up to 12 years of age was 125 g of
bread. From 25 December the norm was increased to 200 g. But often the bread did not consist of flour,
sometimes it was 50 per cent cellulose. Muscular dystrophy was called the Leningrad disease.
Tass

a great many
children in children's
homes and nursing
homes In Leningrad
during the siege
had lost or suffered
damage to their
limbs. In the first
years of the war,
these were mainly
the victims of
bombing or of
frostbite. By the end
of the war, children
injured by landmines
had begun to
appear.
Boris Kudoyarov/Tass.
The Prisoners:
Ghetto
and
ConCentration
Camp
 250

Dont put me in the oven!

During World War II approximately 20 per cent of the civilians killed were children.
No one knows the exact number of children who lost their lives. A count of some kind was
at least kept of adult prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps and ghettoes, since they
were taken out to perform work and were fed, even though extremely scantily, but no precise
statistics were kept of the children. For the most part, children who ended up in concentration
camps effectively became guinea pigs for experiments, so little children were killed almost
immediately.
The firm Topf u. Shne has supplied our camp with experimental bone-crushing
machines with the capacity to process up to 3 cubic metres of light burned bone an hour!
the SS-man Benke, a guard at the Janowska death camp in Lviv, wrote enthusiastically.
Afterwards the light burned bones were supplied to the chemicals firm Strem for processing
into fertiliser. The firms top specialists sent complaints to the camp: The product is of
poor quality. We advise you to use raw material from children for making the intermediate
product, since the bones of the adults contain too little of the nutrients that are beneficial to
plants.
Reading documents like that is enough to make you feel physically ill. So ill that you
want to be sick. But there were things even worse than that. For his own recreation and the
amusement of his family, the commandant of the camp, Obersturmfhrer Gustav Wilhaus,
used to fire methodically at the prisoners with an automatic rifle from the balcony of the
camps administrative building, and after him his wife would fire too. Sometimes, in order
to delight his nine-year-old daughter, Wilhaus had two-to-four-year-old children tossed
up into the air so that he could fire at them. His daughter applauded and shouted: More,
Papa, more, Papa!
Janowska, Salaspils, Ravensbrck, Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Majdanek
these are names that everyone knows. But in addition to them there were another 14,000
extermination camps, each with its own specialisation. In one place children were processed
into light burned bone. In another, following the directive that Himmler issued in Zhitomir,
when he wrote: In the East you will find precious blood. Extract it or exterminate it, they
extracted the blood. Knowing what was in store for them, the children wept: Please mister,
dont put me in the oven, Ive still got some blood left! Then they would pump out the blood
completely. And despite their own gruesome ideology, they did it without differentiating
between the children according to their nationality. Anyones blood would do for the SS
vampires Russian blood, gypsy blood, Jewish blood. However, they took an especially
perverted pleasure in hunting down the Jews, first herding them into the ghettoes and
promising them a calm life there, and then sending them to the oven, a fate which remained
inevitable and inescapable
 252

. . . Where could I find a thick notebook in the ghetto? Alas, someones misfortune
came to my aid. Our friends, the Rumshissky family, tried to escape from the ghetto. But the
Rumshisskys were caught by the Gestapo, and they never came out of there alive. When we
heard what had happened, we went to their apartment the whole place had been turned
upside down. There was a thick notebook lying on the floor, with their son Tsezars notes
on aeroplane modelling in it. There were lots of empty pages left in the notebook, and I
took advantage of that. I gave the notebook a second life by turning it into my diary. I take
very good care of it, after all, it is the only relic I have that has survived from those terrible
days. Tamara Lazerson wrote these words in the foreword to the diary that she kept in the
Kaunas ghetto. It has been published in several languages and was exhibited for a while at
the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Tamaras diary, the diary of a girl who until the age of 13 lived happily in Kaunas with
her parents (her father was a well-known professor of psychology, a head of department at
Vilnius University and a practising doctor) and two older brothers, breaks off on 7 April
1944 with the single word Escape. Tamara flees from the ghetto and spends the next few
months in hiding with people who were not afraid to shelter a Jewish child. On returning to
the city, she meets her brother Victor, who buried his sisters diary in a tin box under the
windows of their house and miraculously managed to find it again among the ruins of the
burnt-out ghetto
In December 1944 Tamaras father died in the Dachau concentration camp. Later
her mother died of typhoid fever in the Stutthof death camp. Tamara Vladimirovna herself
wrote to us about her life after that by e-mail from Haifa: After the ghetto and the appalling
massacre, in which 96 per cent of the Jewish population were killed, I remained alive
thanks to the self-sacrificing efforts of the women who rescued me. I finished the sixth class
of school and went to study at the workers faculty of Kaunas University. I moved to Vilnius
and continued my studies at the university there. In 1952 I graduated from university and
married Mikhail Rostovsky, and my husband and I went to take up our assigned jobs at
the munitions factory in Yoshkar-Ola. Our older daughter was born there. We returned
to Vilnius, where our second daughter was born. In 1971 we left for Israel and settled in
Haifa. In Israel I worked for another 17 years, my husband died and I now have seven
grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. When she left for Israel, Tamara managed to
send her manuscript across the border with the diplomatic post: at the embassy she said that
she had kept a diary, like Anne Frank
Tamara Vladimirovna lived to see her diary published as a genuine book and passed
away in the summer of 2015.
 253

1942
13 September (Sunday). Bad weather. Every day it just pours with rain. Autumn
has set in too soon. A bad mood. The situation gets worse every day. Theres nothing
at home: no flour, no potatoes. Our main food now is carrots and tomatoes, which
so far are still growing in the vegetable patch. The best apples, plums and pears are
sold at the ghetto market, but unfortunately all that is not for us.
14 September (Monday). Somehow I ended up in a work brigade. It was not
very far from the fish market. To my great surprise, Jews words and thoughts circle
entirely around what they can bring in. Although we are forbidden to bring anything
through into the ghetto or buy anything at all, our people take the risk and buy.
They hide the foodstuffs in various places in their clothes and try to get through
the gates. Even when they have 5 kilos on them, they manage to get through the
check clean
15 September (Tuesday). Im bored. I feel the hunger more and more keenly.
Theres none of the news that were longing for so much. I thank God that I have
books. While autumn rages all around, I sit huddled up in my room and read my
treasure a Childrens Encyclopedia. I only have to lose myself in that book to
forget about autumn, the hunger and the cold. You forget about everything when
before your eyes there unfolds all the suffering that people have gone through,
inventing various new things: cars and books, and so on. And the way in which,
because of their inventions, which brought benefit to mankind, they were subjected
to terrible torments, burned at the stake
21 September (Monday). An old wound has opened up the school year has
begun. It hurts me, it hurts me really badly, that yet another year is being wasted.
But theres nothing to be done. I console myself in any way that I can
22 September (Tuesday). The Jewish Police are making the checks at the gates.
The Lithuanians let everything through, only the Jews themselves confiscate things.
People are absolutely outraged by this kind of behaviour. At night trading goes on
across the wall. The sentries have been bought, so they dont see anything. Our
situation is improving a little bit. We are selling our last things. I dont know how it
will be after this. At the front the fighting is still continuing at Stalingrad. There is
fighting in the streets already, but the Germans still cant take the city
24 September (Thursday). Autumn weather. The sun fighting with the rain,
yellow leaves rustling in the gusts of wind and people digging up potatoes. It is all
so familiar, so dear. Today there was an incident in the ghetto: firewood was being
carted in and they found flour under it. They wont get away with that. So far five
men have been arrested. People think that theyll be shot
26 September (Saturday). We have to squeeze up and make room. Every
person is now being given 2.4 square metres. Were taking in two more people. Im
 254

going to sleep in the bedroom again. It will be very uncomfortable. We spent the
whole day today moving things around, so theres no time to write
8 October (Thursday). Papa is unwell and Im concerned about it. Today
we were delighted to hear the news that several bloodsuckers from the National
Socialist Motor Corps had been killed. One of them was our sworn enemy Jordan,
who has broken his own neck at last. They took his body to Kaunas1
13 October (Tuesday). There are rumours going around that 300 people will
have to be sent to Riga. We think there will be a lot of volunteers, because there
have been letters from people sent before, saying that they have a fine life there.
But even so, the ghetto is very unsettled
16 October (Friday). And now the clap of thunder: it has been officially
announced that 150 men and 150 women are required to be sent to Riga. Serious
panic has set in. There arent any volunteers. It will be bad if they start taking them
by force. The checks at the gates have got stricter, they dont let anyone bring
anything through any more either in string bags or in bundles. But people have
contrived to make double linings and double soles for their shoes, they manage to
fold eggs into their hats and bring something into the ghetto that way. But how can
you really hide much?
18 October (Sunday). Anxious days. More wailing and weeping. Theyre
splitting up families again, dividing the men from the women. Its really terrifying
whats going on here. We live quite close to the jailhouse, and we hear the heart-
rending cries of young infants from there. None of the people who are being sent
to Riga hope to come back, just as we dont hope ever to see them again. However,
they still dont have the number of people they need (300). The problem is that
many are excused because of patronage, and they are looking for others to take
their place. (The never-ending story.)
28 October (Wednesday). The anniversary2. No! I cant believe that a year
can fly past so quickly, like the blink of an eye. A sad anniversary. But I shouldnt
complain. I am almost glad that all of that happened last year, that what had to
happen has already happened. Of course, we cannot know what lies in wait for
us in the future, but its better not to think about that, my brothers. Let what is
inevitable come to pass, and in the meantime we are content with a piece of dry
bread and a warm bed
2 November (Monday). An unpleasant day. I was lopped off the brigade and
sent to the aerodrome. It was the first time Id been to the aerodrome. But thats

1
Fritz Jordan was an SS-Hauptsturmfhrer, an adviser on the Jewish question to the German commissar in Kaunas
and in effect the commandant of the Kaunas ghetto.
2
On 28 October 1941 the so-called Great Action took place in the Kaunas ghetto. During this action almost 10,000
prisoners were herded out of the ghetto and on 29 October 1941 they were shot at the Ninth Fort, located not far from
the ghetto.
 255

1935. Only a few years later, following

Tamaras escape from the ghetto, Vitya (on the
left) would hide her diary in a tin box and bury
it below the windows of their house But at
this stage, life is peaceful!

1946. After the war Tamara and her brother were

the only ones left of the large Lazerson family

After the manuscript was rescued from the ruins of the burnt-out ghetto, Tamara
would succeed in taking it abroad and getting it published.
Photo from V. Lazerson and T. Lazerson-Rostovskaya, Notes from the Kaunas Ghetto
 256

not important the important thing is that when we eight women got back to the
ghetto, we were put in the jailhouse. That was already a disaster, to sleep in an
unheated room on a cold night, lying on bare bunks. I lay there, listening to my
stomach gurgling. The cell was absolutely packed and the slops pail was in the
corner. The terrible stench made it impossible to sleep a wink. Ill never forget that
night, lying behind a double set of bars and wondering: what for? We didnt do
anything bad. What have things come to? Not only do the Germans pass sentence
on us however they think fit, but our own police act with high-handed arrogance.
And I was lucky. First thing in the morning Papa used vitamin P1 to have me
released. The others were sent straight from the jailhouse to the work-sites. I came
back home exhausted, but cheerful. Look, I said, Ive killed two birds with one
stone. Just to make sure, I asked Papa if there would be a stain on my character for
the rest of my life, after all, I had been in prison now
9 November (Monday). It has got a lot colder. I try to go outside as seldom as
possible. I think a lot. Memories agitate and torment me so badly that sometimes
it seems my heart will burst out of my chest. Moments like that are very hard for
me. But I have learned to stifle the pain in my heart. I coerce my memories into
silence and scoop up real life in full measure. My heart often aches at the memory
of my friend Isolde. But I cannot force her or the others out of my heart, for that
wound is too deep
13 November (Friday). Incidents of various kinds still occur between us and the
not entirely sane Germans, but a lot less frequently than last year. For instance: in
one work brigade not long ago they boiled cats for our peoples dinner. Of course,
no one ate them. They complained to the officers in charge, who supported us.
Well, theres no shortage of crazy people.
14 November (Saturday). The Germans are already tired of standing up at
Stalingrad. The ghetto is appealing to us to sacrifice our chairs, so that they can sit
down for a while (one of the latest jokes). Our people think up lots of humorous
anecdotes about Stalingrad. But the Russians really have shown great stubbornness
in defending Mother Volga
16 November (Monday). Well, the things people were saying invited disaster.
Yesterday evening a slightly deranged speculator fired at the commandant. It was a
terrible night, everyone prepared to die. They arrested the man who fired the shot,
as well as arresting three officials from the committee, and took 20 hostages. No
one slept in the ghetto last night. Everyone was sure that they would face death
for something like this. But thank God, the night passed quietly and early in the
morning the first rumours leaked out that he had only shot into the air, so the
ghetto wasnt in any danger.
1
That was what the inmates of the ghetto called patronage.
 257

17 November (Tuesday). Theyve released the hostages. Today an announcement

from the Security Service was posted, saying that no action would be undertaken
in the ghetto. They warn us not to dare to start a panic and say that anyone who
does dare to start a panic will be hanged. And there was a second announcement,
demanding that any guns in the ghetto be handed in, since two pistols, a briefcase
full of gold watches and an immense sum of money were found on the man who
fired the shot. After the announcement was posted, people calmed down.
18 November (Wednesday). After suffering appalling agony, the wretched
offender was finally hanged in public. They set up the gallows beside the committee.
The commandant himself drove people out of their houses to watch the hideous
spectacle. Being such a flighty girl, I was unable to control my curiosity and also
went to look at the gallows. Its not such a hideous sight at all. The sight of a
man who has suffered so very much is just overwhelmingly pitiful. But then, other
people say he shouldnt be pitied, because he could have doomed the entire ghetto
by acting so stupidly
24 November (Tuesday). Its a long time since I read any books. Its hellishly
difficult to get hold of them now. And apart from that, its too dark in the evening,
because they turn off the electricity. In a dark, unheated room theres nothing
else left to do but go to bed, so at seven, and often even at six, Im already lying
down. Thats the worst time, because when I lie in the darkness I am tormented by
implacable memories of the past and I simply cant shake them off. Sleep eludes
me and I suffer like that until midnight
6 December (Sunday). Reading the newspaper today, I saw condolences for the
Dominas family. What had happened? Apparently Henrikas had been killed. It
didnt say how it happened. I was stunned. Dominas had been killed, Isoldes love
and mine had been killed. I couldnt carry on reading the newspaper. Sad thoughts
swarmed around in my head. One after another my childhood friends are killed,
they die. When will my turn come? Death, O almighty death! What meaning does
life have, measured against a single moment of death?
11 December (Friday). In order to distract themselves from things, theyve
started organising concerts in the ghetto. Tomorrow, for instance, therell be a
dinner for doctors. Theyre preparing a few sandwiches and a glass of tea and a
programme of the arts of the ghetto. There are some very beautiful little songs and
poems. So in that way people escape from things for one evening and feel as if they
were in a different world
17 December (Thursday). They say that all the Allied States have staged a
protest: the traffic was halted for two minutes and people bowed their heads in
sympathy for us. Its very nice of them to remember us. But what difference does
it make?
 258

18 December (Friday). The ghetto is in a dismal mood. The problem is that

the Germans have already reacted to yesterdays protest. There are rumours of
demonstrations in Germany and that every minute they are broadcasting over
the radio: Jews must be exterminated. Jews must be exterminated! In the ghetto
panic has set in
31 December (Thursday). A gloomy New Years Eve. Our fate is being decided.
Are we destined to see the sun in 1943? We try to be cheerful, but we cant manage
it. Not wishing to break with tradition, we at least made supper a bit better today.
Just think, there was even sauerkraut! At twelve oclock shots ring out theyre
greeting the New Year in the city. But we say nothing, we dont hear. We went to
sleep a long time ago, without waiting for midnight.
1943
1943. HOORAH!
2 January (Saturday). Because its New Year our workers have a few days off.
The work at the aerodrome has almost been completed only women are working
there now. For the men there is still the worst forced labour of all, building the
Green Bridge. The work there is extremely gruelling. So just like last year, when
they seized people to do the work at the aerodrome, now theyre trying to catch
them to work on the Green Bridge
22 January (Friday). The final act of the Geists tragedy has been played out.
He was shot at the Ninth Fort, and she poisoned herself, the poor thing. What a
pity. My heart mourns for this ill-fated couple.
24 January (Sunday). Ive been given a service. Every day I bring my female
neighbour three buckets of water. (Our neighbours are elderly people, the dentist
Twerie and his wife. They cant walk to the icebound well to get water.) I earn one
mark for this. Well, thats something at least! Ah, this is all nonsense. I miss my
friends, I miss love. I get frenzied and I get furious, theres a fire blazing inside me,
I cant understand whats happening to me
8 March (Monday). My greatest wish has finally been granted. Ive been
accepted for the vegetable-growing course at the vocational school. I went to the
admissions committee today. Everythings fine. As soon as the first group finishes
its classes, well start studying. And as well as that, theyre offering courses in
dressmaking, but I dont want to sign up for those.
4 April (Sunday). Its almost a whole month since I wrote anything. I work at
the vocational school now. Im very pleased about that. The lectures are extremely
interesting. We take notes and then study them. Im quite unrecognisable now,
because Im working and studying for the good of our Motherland Eretz-Yizrael.
Today I handed in quite a large article for the wall newspaper. The article concluded
with the slogan Forward, to work, my friends! Eretz-Yizrael awaits us. What fun
 259

7 April (Wednesday). What joy! Rejoice, rejoice, O my heart, O my lips, kiss

this little piece of paper from Kazis. I though he had forgotten me, but no, look,
he has sent his greeting. I am beside myself with joy. This is a superbly magnificent
romance, the romance of my life and my love. Insane with happiness, love and joy,
I wrote a little poem that expresses my insanity gloriously
13 May (Thursday). Hello, my dear diary. Again I come rushing to you. Only
forgive me for not writing for such a long time. But then, I shall tell you so much, so
very much today. So, I begin. I have received not one, but two letters from Kazis.
The flame of love was already beginning to blaze in my heart, but he has quenched
it. Well, to hell with it! Im still working at the hothouse three times a week. Im
very happy with the S Block: a fine crowd, good fun. Im a good student. My
vegetable patch is marvellous. Today I ate my first radish. I planted tomatoes.
They look beautiful! A few days ago the mood in the ghetto was bad, but today
it is excellent, apparently just one more month and well be free. Im already
dreaming about it. The political news is good too. The Germans have been driven
out of Africa, they have been offered terms of peace. Goering and Goebbels are on
their way to Rome. Were waiting, waiting for freedom, my heart is pounding hard
in my breast. Perhaps in a week they will open the gates of our prison, throw them
wide. Wait for me, my dear Motherland, I will soon be there. Just a little longer,
and I am yours, O Eretz-Yizrael!
20 May (Thursday). A week has flown by like smoke, and I still have my yellow
star of honour. They are registering children from 13 to 16 years old now. I
definitely have to turn up. They will probably organise a childrens brigade
25 May (Tuesday). O my God! I come back to you with pain in my heart, dear
diary. I cannot endure it and I hope to pour out all the pain that is crushing me on
your pages. Oh, what a night! A delightful and terrible night! This is a night I shall
not soon forget. It has revealed so much to me. Only now have I come to see how
blind I was. How corrupt and depraved the young people of the ghetto are! Instead
of surrendering themselves to the sacred feeling of love for their Motherland, for
their neighbours, they devote themselves to perversion. They have woven their
nest in the S Block. Several dangerous boys in the first year have corrupted the
other children. Now the S Block is regarded as a den of vice. Im disgusted, I
cant understand it. And I, a weak girl, have to stand against all this alone
2 August (Monday). The mood is bad. Theyve taken people off to Kdainiai.
Dreadful wailing and sobbing, as if someone is about to die Ah, Im so sick of
war! The weather is wonderful. The sunshine is really hot. The sky is blue. I lie in
the shade and ponder. The light breeze kisses my face. I think about days that are
passing, about the past and perhaps about Kazis. But he has disappointed me. He
was an object of such great hopes and great love for me. Now I dont love him any
 26 0

more. His place has been taken by Vovik. Im learning Ancient Hebrew, a difficult,
but beautiful language
10 August (Tuesday). Yesterday a group of people visited the workshops
Hitler-Jugend. They came to look at Jews working, as if theyd come to a zoo. Its
entertainment for them.
3 September (Friday). Rain. An overcast sky, a sombre mood. Terrible, terrible
things are being done. I found out yesterday that, as they retreat, the Germans
are taking little children from 2 to 10 years old with them. Trains carrying these
children arrive in Lithuania. Here some of the children are killed and the others
are sold at 23 marks per child. How ghastly!
It makes my hair stand on end when I hear about such appalling reality. Ah,
how low the culture of Western Europe has sunk! Thats it, instead of advancing, all
culture is going backwards. The only thing still lacking is for the Germans to start
eating live children. This is what war leads to! This is what the claim that wars are
fought for the future of generations to come leads to, and subsequent generations
make the same claim that they are also fighting for the sake of generations to
come. And so from century to century, humankind is debased, culture goes into
decline and the world goes to hell
10 September (Friday). A few days ago the mood was funereal there were
terrible rumours of Kasernirung1 This frightening word is passed from mouth to
mouth and everyone shudders
18 September (Saturday). The mood is bad. Kasernirung is absolutely definitely
going to happen. The final committee meeting was held today. An immense
disaster is inevitable. Alas The uncertainty is terrible, what will happen now?
Will they shoot us? Will we be left alive? Im afraid. Even death is better than the
uncertainty. My heart hurts. I dont know what to do now. Viktor brought bad
news, apparently Rudik has been shot. He met a man who was at the Sixth Fort
with him. No! No! I dont want to believe it! I wont. No! It cant be true. My heart
says no, my lips affirm it no. There are plenty of dark-complexioned men, arent
there? O my God, how terrible. Little brother, youre still alive, I know you are.
The answer is silence, appalling silence. Why do you say nothing, walls? Shout,
speak, reassure my soul. I ask you for only one little word, the most precious word
NO!
20 September (Monday). Mist shrouds the sky, grief shrouds my heart. The
mood is depressed. Camp, Kasernirung these terrible words are passed from
mouth to mouth. A sombre picture of death stands before my eyes. The ghetto is
passing through its final and most dangerous stage. The front is moving closer.

1
Literally the quartering of troops in barracks, but in effect the transformation of the ghetto into a concentration camp
and an important step towards its liquidation.
 261

According to various sources, the Nazis established from 7,000 to 42,000 camps for European Jews during
World War II. Almost all the prisoners in the Jewish ghettoes were killed during the Holocaust. The Nuremberg
Trial recognised 6,000,000 European Jews as victims of the Shoa (the Holocaust).
TASS.
 262

My heart flutters anxiously. Im in low spirits. Death seems terrible, life seems
attractive. Today the situation should become completely clear two principles
are battling with each other: which will win, life or death? I must hope, hope, my
life lies only in hope. Hope and wait. The Eternal Jew. The day before yesterday I
had a frank conversation with Rasha, I bared my soul to her and told her about my
aspirations and how thing are going. She seemed to be pleased with me. I love her
passionately. Rasha is a true human being, my heart insists: compared with her,
you are a worm, I reproach myself
Testament (will)! When I die, give this half of my soul (my diary) to Rasha
1 October (Friday). New Year! A festival. Our New Year. Disturbances. They
shot Savitskas. I feel so sorry for him. Kasernirung has resurfaced. The mood is
terrible, reminiscent of the first days of the ghetto. This new commandant, this
Hecke, is a detestable creep. Otherwise things arent too bad.
6 October (Wednesday). Im not feeling well. The weakness is taking its toll.
Ive started feeling afraid. I talked to Zilia: life is so interesting! Viktor is cooking
something. Ive begun spying on him. It looks like he wants to escape or he has got
involved with some kind of organisation, or perhaps hes hiding a gun, who can
tell?1
23 October (Saturday). Magnificent autumn weather. Many people are
escaping from the camp. Most of them join up with the Russian partisans. We fear
disaster. The Security Service has occupied the school blocks and has already built
a fence round them. People say they are going to close down the vocational school.
Im indifferent to everything. Im sick of being stuck in the camp, I long with all
my heart to go to the city, I want to go to the work brigade.
26 October (Tuesday). Its terrifying. A half past five this morning we were
woken by terrible screams: The ghetto is surrounded, there are 50 lorries on
Varniu Street.
Everyone got up and panic broke out. Everywhere I looked there were frightened
womens and childrens faces. An action was the first thought that flashed through
my mind. But no! After only a short while it became clear that they were taking
people for work. A German with a list in his hand and two Jews were walking from
building to building. The order was to pack and leave. They took away Rosa, Ira,
Lyusya and the Barons, Im afraid for Rasha. We have packed our things and are
awaiting our fate. I am fearless. People are exhausted and indifferent: If not today,
then tomorrow God only knows where is better. But there is only one death. I
take consolation from the fact that yesterday they took away 1,800 Lithuanians. I
sit and wait to see what will happen. I look through the window to see if they are
coming for us
1
Viktor was a member of the Zionist group Betar, which was part of the underground Zionist MATSOK organisation.
 263

3 November (Wednesday). Once again the storm has passed by without touching
us. They took 4,000 people to the work sites. They separated the men from the
women and divided everybody into three groups. One section has arrived in Riga,
another in Zapykis. But theres no definite information
13 November (Saturday). Again they have torn 300 people out of the ghetto and
sent them to the cable-laying work sites at Marijampol. Theyre tearing people
away like that, little by little until soon therell be no one left. This week the
Kasernirung was supposedly due to start, but everythings calm so far. The front is
moving closer, the Russians are already only 15 km from the Latvian border. The
mood in the ghetto is pretty poor, they say that everyone has been taken away from
the ghetto at iauliai
28 November (Sunday). The hour has struck and Kasernirung is nigh. On Tuesday
theyll start converting the aerodrome for Kasernirung. Great agitation. There
are already lists of who will be quartered where in the camp. People are receiving
notifications. The mood is bad. Our work (in the organisation) is continuing. I
sense a great strength within me it motivates me to work unstintingly. Onward
into mortal combat, my friends! I can fight to the very last drop of blood. Onward,
only onward!
29 November (Monday). An exceptional day! The rudder of my life, which had
heeled over to starboard, is now perfectly trimmed. There is only a straight road
ahead. I look fearlessly to left and right. There are no crossroads, my road leads
straight ahead, straight on, forward, ever forward. There is no road back. The first
step, the most difficult step, has been surmounted. Now I shall climb ever higher
and higher, step by step, to the summit of my people, to the peak of victory. The
oath has been uttered. My heart prophesied through my lips. The room was filled
with a solemn silence. Now I am a true daughter of my people. I shall fight to the
last drop of blood to save my brothers. No more misery and torment! . . .
30 November (Tuesday). Today the work brigades did not go into the city. The
first train left. I was at the station. A terrible picture. All of Krikshchyukaiche
Street was completely filled with people, bundles and little children. The people
were bearing up, with their faces set in icy expressions. There are no tears left! Lorry
after lorry drives up. Jews get in, drag their things in, look round at the ghetto one
last time, and the lorry sets off. Then people start waving caps or handkerchiefs,
whatever they have. Tears spring to their eyes and some of them break into sobs,
and thats all Thats how people depart from life and, like little sheep, still with
hope, enter the gates of death
5 December (Sunday). December. Deep snow on the ground. Its chilly outside.
Viktor has been to see Kazis and brought me greetings from him. K. is looking for
a hiding place for me. I dont want to be a naive little sheep either. I worked last
26 4

night. Our work is forging ahead. At least that brings me joy. Im full of energy. As
for the resettlement, the first district isnt being moved yet, but there are rumours
doing the rounds that our district will have to move. We also have time before
the Kasernirung, at least until the New Year. Im hesitating. Ahead of me lies a
crossroads with four exits. Which way shall I turn? At least you advise me, Jesus,
I used to love so you much! Kazis is in the sixth class. In another two years he will
finish school. It feels like a knife stabbing me to the heart. What will happen to
me? What will I become? The old wound has opened up study, study Three
lost years. O God! The past came back to me. Class by class I rose ever higher and
higher, but suddenly: stop, a barrier! and now its three years since Ive been
to school. Its hard to console myself. Only dont kill me, dont destroy me. Ill
achieve my goal yet!
1944
1 January (Shabbat). January the first a new page in our life. The morning
of the New Year has dawned. The chronicle of the old year, filled with suffering
and tears, has reached its conclusion. The final page, filled with tears, has been
turned. All the brutal events, all the blood of murdered innocents that has been
spilt all this is recorded here, and You, the year of 1943, will have to answer to
the judgement of God and hand over the culprits. On the pages of history You,
the year 1943, will be noted as the Jewish peoples bloodiest and most brutal year.
What good did You bring? You? None, nothing at all! But You brought so much
that was bad. From the very beginning of Your reign, during the rule of youthful
January, what acts were committed in Vilnius? Eh? Confess! What did You do with
the Geists? And when they were taking the people away to Kdainiai? Tell me!
When they were selling the Russian children? When they were sending people to
Kaiiadorys, breaking families in half? And that terrible black cloud of Kasernirung,
repeatedly advancing and retreating, merely mocking the poor, suffering people.
When Savitskas was killed? Remember, on 26 October, the most terrible of all the
days, for that one day may You be cursed! Three thousand people were torn out of
the ghetto and dispatched into the cold and filth, to somewhere in the foreign land
of Estonia. Orphans!
What? You say nothing? You say nothing, You have no words of justification!
You are guilty, cursed year, I summon You to judgement damn You, damn You!
You will have to answer for all the bloodied victims, You bloody year of 1943!
23 January (Sunday) Its evening already. This happy Sunday will come to
an end, and tomorrow its back to work. Every day in the work brigade its the same
picture: women, goaded along like a herd of cattle by a herdsman with a gun in his
hands. And in this way the days, weeks and months fly by and its always the same
thing. And every day I go to the brigade and count the hours 12 already, dinner
 26 5

time already, in a couple of hours it will be five, then six, and finally, blessed be the
hour, we go home. That road: the slopping through mud and puddles, the cursing
and groaning of exhausted creatures. And finally, the gates, the ghetto. Home at
last! Happiness, it seems, but no, for tomorrow its the same thing again. The day
is repeated all over again, in every little point. A menial labourers day, a poor
wretchs day.
And this constant yearning: bread and light! Nothing but hunger and darkness
all around. Nothing for the soul, no food for the mind. A man-machine doesnt last
long. His health is devoured by the factory, a sombre killer. It sucks in a healthy,
muscular youth with beautiful dreams and a lucid mind. And it casts out black-
faced, prematurely aged human invalids, no use for anything. Yes, life is as sombre
as that. An uneducated man has never seen anything better, he doesnt know what
knowledge is, his days fly past in vain, he gives his physical strength, he takes the
place of the machine. But the insatiable machine sucks out his strength and tosses
him aside. The man dies. Another youth takes his place and meets the same end.
They all meet the same end. But not me, I wont accept this, I want to study, I
want so much that is unattainable. I want to be an educated person and enlighten
the world. And just look, when my head is full of dreams and aspirations like that,
I have to sit here twiddling my thumbs in captivity and watch the best days of my
life passing by! Pointlessly, without any hopes for the future, without anything real
in the present, with nothing but empty fantasies in my head. Its frightening. Three
appalling years have flown by, and no one will ever give them back to me
7 March (Tuesday). Today Im at home. I worked the whole week. Yesterday
was my birthday. I turned 15
27 March (Monday). An action. 1,500 children and old people taken off to the
forts. Forty Jewish policemen ended their lives at the Ninth Fort. Others were held
for a few days and released for the information they provided. Many refuges have
been discovered. The young generation has been killed children up to the age
of 12 the old people have been killed, and well be killed too There were also
heroic mothers who strangled their children with their own hands, who insisted that
the children must be killed first, before they were taken away. And the children?
Young parents gave away everything that was most precious to them. The husband
carried his invalided old parents to the lorry in his arms, the wife carried the little
ones. Horrifying! But how bright the sun was! And it was smiling
28 March (Tuesday) (continued). I thought the end had come. For everyone. A
bloody tragedy. I have no words to describe it. I was working both days. Oh, those
poor, poor mothers, who came back home from work and found their children
gone. And who, who was there left to turn to? There is no God he sends the sun to
laugh, the people are traitors, each worse than the other. They betray the children
 26 6

whom we had managed to hide. God, brotherhood and the ideal of Man have all
met the same fate. The instincts of life and death hold sway over everything
4 April (Tuesday). At first glance, everything seems to have calmed down.
Whoever was not touched by disaster has remained calm. The wounds of those
whose hearts have been torn out will not be healed by compassion; oi, they will
not be healed. The well-fed cannot understand the hungry. And even so the ghetto
promises us nothing good. Those who can, flee. Its quite clear, first the old people,
then the young ones
7 April. Escape.
 268

She didnt write this terrible diary at the age of 14 she learned it by heart. In a
tiny room in the ghetto, on the bunks of a concentration camp, cheek by jowl with death.
Whatever happens to you will happen to these memoirs, Mashas mother had told her. And
Masha repeated them over and over, word for word. Death passed her by. But it carried
off her mother, younger brother and younger sister, all presumably burnt up in the ovens of
Auschwitz, although she does not even know exactly where they died. Death also carried off
many of the characters in her diary, which she had to hide from the Fascists in the safest
place of all, her own memory.
After she was freed from the Stutthof concentration camp, Masha, with her teeth broken
by her jailers and her hair torn out, went through the checks of the new Soviet authorities
and returned to Vilnius; she found her father, who by that time had remarried, and wrote
down what she had learned, letter for letter, in three thick notebooks, which she put away
in her desk drawer.
But not so very long after the Jews had been herded into cramped little rooms surrounded
by high walls in the cities, and then into the gas chambers, it started again: a new wave
of anti-Semitism, the murder of Solomon Mikhoels and the collapse of the Anti-Fascist
Committee, the Doctors Plot case as if millions of people had never been tortured to death,
Maria Grigorevna Rolnikayte told us in an interview with the Russian Weekly Argumenty
i Fakty. Then she took out three notebooks. Whatever happens to you will happen to these
memoirs They were printed under the title I Must Tell My Story and translated into 18
languages! And yet no one seems to have drawn any conclusions For all the water that
has flowed under the bridge since the times that I describe, people have still not begun to love
each other more. Take the attitude to Gastarbeiter, take the fraternal nations of Russians
and Ukrainians! Hostility is rife everywhere, flaring up and then subsiding again. And that
is a painful topic for me, the fact that people carry on hating each other. I dont know where
this bitterness comes from. But I must tell my story!
She lives in St Petersburg, where she moved to join her husband, an engineer, after
graduating from a Literary Institute. She lives alone now, writing by hand and then taking a
long time to type up the text on an old computer As an author, Rolnikayte always writes on
the same theme, even when she departs from documentary writing; all her literary prose and
all her characters come from that place, from the cells and torture chambers. I was asked
once: Why do you always write about sad things, Maria Grigorevna? Write about love!
A lump rose in my throat. Because she is all about love; love unrealised, trampled down,
executed, murdered. Love full of hope that some day people will change.
 269

Autumn 1943
The endless stream flows out of the ghetto. The irksome rain never stops
for a moment. We are completely soaked through. Water streams off our hair, our
noses, our sleeves. Mama tells her children to lift their feet higher, so that they
wont get soaked. Beside us another mother sets up a tent for her children: she has
stuck several branches into the ground and put her coat over them. How strange
to be afraid of catching a cold in times like these
Mama is crying. I implore her to calm down, if only for the childrens sake.
But she cant. She only looks up at us and weeps even more bitterly.
And more and more people keep arriving In the ghetto we thought there
were fewer of us. It will get dark soon. The ravine is already crowded. Some sit
in one spot, others walk around for some reason, wandering about, stepping over
people and bundles. They have obviously lost their families and friends.
Its getting dark. As long I can still see, Ill look at the trees, the birds nests,
the branches, the distant buildings and every window in them. Ill probably never
see all this again, will I? Everything is alive: every little leaf, every raindrop,
even a tiny little midge. It will still be alive tomorrow, but well be gone No! I
wont go to Ponary! Ill stay here! Ill bury myself in the ground, but I wont go
anywhere! I dont want to die!
But then, those who have already been shot didnt want to die either
Darkness has fallen. Its still raining. Every now and then the guards light us
up with rockets. They keep watch to make sure we dont escape. But how can we
escape if there are so many of them?
Ruvik shudders in his sleep. He dozed off with his nose nuzzled against my
shoulder. His warm breath tickles my neck. His final sleep. And there is nothing
I can do to change the fact that tomorrow this little warm, breathing body will lie
in a narrow pit, slippery with blood. Others will be heaped on top of him. Perhaps
I will even be one of them
They fired another rocket and it woke Ruvik. He looked round, wide-eyed in
fright and heaved a deep sigh, not at all like a child.
Raechka isnt sleeping. She has already worn Mama out with her questions:
Will they herd us to Ponary? And how, on foot, or will they take us in trucks?
Perhaps theyll take us to the camp after all? Where would Mama prefer to go
to iauliai or to Estonia? And when they shoot you, does it hurt? Mama replies
through her tears. Raechka strokes her, trying to calm her, then thinks for a
moment and asks another question
The guards order us to get up and walk up the slope, into a courtyard. Our
things are soaked and smeared with mud. But we dont need them. I took my little
suitcase anyway, but left the bundle jutting up out of the mud. Theres a jostling
 270

crowd in the courtyard. We just barely creep along towards the gates at the far
side. The closer we get to them, the tighter the crush is. Are they really not letting
us out? More and more people arrive from the ravine. How can you hold back a
crowd like that? Were squeezed to death already
It turns out that the gates are closed. Theyre only letting people out through
the wicket gate. We reach it too. They are letting people out one at a time. Mama is
worried in case we lose each other, and she orders me to go first. Ruvik follows me,
Raechka follows him and Mama comes last. That way shell be able to see us all.
I walk out. A soldier grabs me and shoves me to one side. I dont see any trucks
there. I turn round to tell Mama about this, but shes not there. The street is
cordoned off by a line of soldiers. Theres another cordon behind that, and a large
crowd after that. And my mother is there. I run up to the soldier and ask him to
let me through. I explain that there has been some kind of misunderstanding, Ive
been separated from my mother. There she is, standing over there. My mothers
there, I want to be with her. I tell him, I plead with him, but the soldier doesnt
even listen to me. He watches the women coming out of the small gate and every
now and then pushes one or another in our direction. He drives the others that
way, towards the crowd.
Suddenly I heard my mothers voice. She shouts that I mustnt go to her! And
she asks the soldier not to let me through because Im still young and Im a good
worker
Still afraid to accept the truth, I shout at the top of my voice, Then you come
to me! Come here, Mama! But she shakes her head and shouts in a strangely
hoarse voice, Live, my child! Live, at least you! Avenge the children! She leans
down to them, says something and laboriously lifts them up, one at a time, so that
I can see them. Ruvik gives me such a strange look He waves
They have been shoved away. I never see them again. I climb up on a rock
beside the wall and look round, but my mother is nowhere to be seen. Wheres
my mother? My vision is blurring. Its the stress, obviously. Theres a ringing,
buzzing sound in my ears How can there be a river in the street? Its not a river,
its blood. Such a lot of it, and its foaming. And Ruvik is waving and begging
to come to me. But theres just no way I can reach out my hand to him Im
staggering, I dont know why. The little island that Im standing on is probably
sinking Im sinking
Why am I lying down? Where has the river disappeared to?
There isnt any river. Im lying on the pavement. A few women are leaning
down over me. One is holding my head, another is taking my pulse. Wheres my
mother? I must see my mother! But the women dont allow me to get up: I fainted.
And that has never happened before
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1940. Only a year later,

when she was in the
Vilnius ghetto, 14-year-old
Masha would start keeping
a diary and learning it by
heart.

Masha and her father are standing on the right. They had been separated, but
were reunited after the war the remnants of a close-knit family. They couldnt bury
Mashas mother and her little brother and sister they had been burnt in Auschwitz.
Photo from the archive of M. Rolnikayte.
 272

A camp! Bunkhouses long, wooden, single-storey huts. Windows faintly

lit up. People scuttling about all around. For some reason all dressed in striped
pyjamas. Something strange is happening by one of the huts: men in those stripes
are jumping out of the windows. They jump out and run back into the hut, appear
in the windows again and jump out again. And German soldiers beat them and
drive them on. Men fall, but new blows lift them to their feet and they dash on to
jump again. What is this? Are these madmen that the Fascists are deriding at such
length?
We were ordered to pile all our things in a single heap in the small square in
front of the hut. They dont let you into the huts with your things.
The open space is guarded by two soldiers. A few men in striped clothes are
hovering around timidly here as well. They quietly ask where we are from. And we
want to know where we have ended up. It turns out that were not far from Riga,
in the Kaiserwald concentration camp. If we have anything to smoke or eat, better
share it with them, because the Hitlerites will take it away from us anyway. The
men jumping out of the windows arent madmen, but perfectly normal people,
being punished for some stupid trifle They punish you for everything here, and
a lot worse than that. The men arent wearing pyjamas at all, thats the prisoners
striped uniform. Theres no hope of escape, because the wire is under high voltage.
They give you hardly any food at all two hundred and fifty grams of bread and
three-quarters of a litre of so-called soup. Often people are punished by being
left without any food at all for several days. The men are starving. If we cant
give them anything, theyll run off again, because the punishment for talking to a
woman is twenty-five lashes.
I hastily drag my notes out of the suitcase and tuck them inside my clothes.
But I dont have time to take everything: the sentry drives me away.
We are lined up by a German woman dressed in SS uniform. Could she really
be in the SS too? Probably yes, because she yells and beats us After she has
counted us, she orders us into the hut and starts beating us again to make us hurry.
Theres a crush in the doorway, with everyone hurrying to slip into the hut, to
escape the lash. Another SS woman stands by the door and checks that we have
handed everything over. If she spots a tiny little bundle in your hands, or even a
handbag, she drives you back out to put that on the pile too. And at the same time,
of course, she beats you too.
The hut is completely empty a ceiling, walls and a floor. There are straw
mattresses on the floor and a broom in the corner. Thats all. The female overseer
yells at us to lie down. Anyone who doesnt lie down instantly is laid flat with the
broom. It beats them on their heads, shoulders, arms anywhere at all. When
were all lying down, she orders us not to budge. The sentries standing outside
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the windows will fire at the slightest movement. We are not allowed to leave the
barracks. Talking is also forbidden.
The vicious SS woman puts the broom back in its place and leaves. The women
call her Elsa. Perhaps they heard someone call her that, or perhaps thats the
name theyve given her.
So Im in a concentration camp. Prisoners uniforms, men jumping out of
windows and even more terrible punishments. Elsa and her broom, hunger. How
appalling it is here! And Im alone If only my mother was here Where is she
now? Perhaps at this very moment, right now, shes standing beside a pit in the
forest? And the same wind that is howling under the windows here is snapping
branches in the forest and frightening the children! Im afraid! Unbearably
afraid!
My mother Raechka, Ruvik. Only a short time ago we were together. Ruvik
wanted to take his books. Youll read them when were free
A whistle. Long and lingering. I look, and vicious Elsa is standing in the
doorway again. She shouts, Appel! (Check!). But we dont understand what
she wants and just sit up. Elsa grabs the broom again. We run out of the hut.
Its dark and cold. People are running out of the other huts too. They line
up. Beating and swearing, Elsa lines us up as well. She is helped by an SS-man.
Suddenly he stands to attention in front of an officer who has walked up, reports
how many of us there are and accompanies the officer as he counts us himself.
After counting us, the officer walks towards the other huts
We were herded back into the hut and ordered to sit down on the straw
mattresses, not to talk and not to move. We sat there. Suddenly my hand came
across my fathers photograph in my pocket (how did it get in there?). I looked
at my father and suddenly felt so sad that I burst into sobs. He was gone, and so
was my mother, and Id been left alone to suffer torment in this appalling camp. I
could never get used to being here. I couldnt live here.
The woman beside me asked why I was crying. I showed her the photograph,
but she only sighed, Tears wont help
SS-men appeared in the doorway again. They ordered us to line up and
announced that we had to hand over all our money, watches, rings in short,
everything that we still had. The punishment for any attempt to conceal, bury or
even discard anything was death! An officer with a box walks between the rows. Of
course, the collection is really pathetic
Elsa appeared in the doorway again, very amused that we are still standing.
After jeering at us briefly, she ordered us to line up in twos. She counted off ten
and led them away. Those standing closest to the doors told us that the women
had been led into a hut on the other side of the open square.
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Soon Elsa came back, counted off another ten and led them away too. But
the first ten hadnt come out Could that really be a crematorium? So we had
been brought here especially in order to be killed, leaving no trace. A few women
standing closest to the doors ran back to the end of the line. What good would
that do?
Im in the seventh group of ten. The lines in front of me melt away, growing
shorter and shorter. Soon it will be my turn too
Im already being led along Elsa opens the door of the terrible hut. No smell
at all. Maybe this gas has no smell? A dimly lit anteroom. Lots of clothes dumped
by the walls. Female overseers standing nearby. They order us to get undressed
too. To take off our clothes and then approach these overseers, two at a time.
My hands are shaking, its hard to get undressed. And what can I do with my
notes? I stick them under my arms and squeeze them against myself. I walk up to
an SS-woman and she checks my clothes. She takes the wool dress that Mother
told me to put on over my summer one. I ask her to leave the warm dress and take
the summer one. But I receive a slap across the face and stop talking. Now the SS-
woman checks the sleeves and pockets, in case Ive hidden something. She finds
my fathers photograph. I hold out my hand so that the SS-woman can give it
back to me, but she tears the photograph into little pieces and throws them on the
floor. There is white hair on one scrap, an eye looks out of another. I turn away
We are ordered to dress quickly in the clothes that have been left to us and go
out through the door at the back. All the women who were led away before turn
out to be there. But the ones in the huts are still suffering anguish, thinking that
they are being led to a crematorium
Finally they let us into the hut. To our immense joy and surprise, there is a
large cauldron of soup standing in there with a pile of bowls. We are ordered to
line up in single file. As we walk along we have to pick up a bowl, into which Elsa
will pour soup. We have to drink it up quickly and put the bowl back. The soup for
the next women is poured into the same bowls, which havent even been rinsed.
There are no spoons at all I waited for my turn to come. Unfortunately, the
soup is incredibly thin. Nothing but blackish, hot water, with six specks of grain
floating majestically in it and absolutely refusing to enter my mouth. But even
so, it tastes very good. The main thing is that its hot. Its just a shame that the
amount of food shrinks so mercilessly. Now theres nothing left at all. And Im so
hungry, even hungrier than before the soup.
I go to take the bowl back. I look and see a Hitlerite beckoning with his finger.
Does he really mean me? Yes, apparently he does. I walk up to him timidly and
wait to see what he will say. And he hits me on one cheek, then on the other and
then again on the first one. He punches me with his fists, trying to hit my head. I
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try to protect myself with the bowl, but he snatches it out of my hands and flings it
into a corner. And he beats me again, pummelling me. I lose my footing and fall.
I try to get up, but I cant he is kicking me. No matter which way I turn, the
gleam of his boots is there in front of my eyes. Hes hit my mouth! I can barely
catch my breath. My lips have immediately gone numb, my tongue has turned
large and heavy. But the Hitlerite keeps kicking me, lashing at me, only not
so painfully now, it seems. Only theres blood dripping onto the floor, probably
mine
Finally the Hitlerites left. The women got me to my feet and helped me to
reach a straw mattress. They advise me to hold my head back, so that the blood
will stop running out of my nose. They are so kind and caring that I want to
cry. One of them sighs: what has he done to me, an innocent child! Another one
curses him, and yet another keeps trying to guess why he thrashed me like this
Perhaps, when I was taking back the bowl, I came too close to the queue and he
thought I wanted to get a second helping of soup?
Why are they talking so loudly? After all, Im in pain, my head hurts unbearably!
If only they would turn out the light! Is my eyebrow split? It hurts too. And he
knocked out my front teeth
This time it was a short journey. We drove into a large courtyard, surrounded
by a high stone wall, with several rows of barbed wire and lamps above it. There
are no barracks huts. There is only a single huge building. At the back of the
courtyard is an awning with lamps hanging down at the corners. There are very
pleasant smells coming from it. Could it really be a kitchen, are they going to give
us soup? A German in civilian clothes lines us up. A dark, semi-military suit and a
cap, very much like a prisoners. He counted us and ordered us not to move from
the spot, then left. Glancing round fearfully, a few men walked over to us. We
learn from them that the camp is called Strassdenhoff and its in Yugla, a suburb
of Riga. Its a new camp. So far there are only a hundred and sixty men here from
the Riga ghetto. There werent any women before, were the first. Were going to
live in this big building. Its an old factory. The mens quarters are on the ground
floor, ours will be on the third floor. They dont know where were going to work.
They work on a construction site. Its very hard work, especially since they work
on an empty stomach. The German who counted us, Hans, is the camp foreman.
Hes a prisoner too. He has been in various different camps for eight years. No
one knows what for. He has an assistant, Little Hans. The camp commandant is
an SS-man, an Unterscharfhrer and a terrible sadist
We have been ordered to carry rocks. The men are paving a road between
the barrack huts that are being built. The other women bring the rocks from the
quarry in little railway trucks and we have to carry them over to the masons. The
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armed guards and overseers dont take their eyes off us for a moment. The little
wagons must be full. They have to be pushed at a run and only by four women at a
time; we have to distribute the rocks at a run too; the road pavers have to lay them
quickly. Everything has to be done quickly and well, otherwise they will shoot us.
The rocks are terribly heavy. Two women are not permitted to carry one rock
together. They cant be rolled either. Talking while working is forbidden. We can
only ask to be excused in order to relieve ourselves once a day, and we have to
wait until several women have asked. The armed guard doesnt take one woman
at a time
I have lacerated my fingers until they are all bloody. They have turned blue
and swollen up, a terrifying sight.
Finally the whistle sounded for dinner. They lined us up quickly and led us
into the camp. Those standing at the front were given soup immediately, but we
had to wait until they drank it and the bowls were free. We tried to hurry them. We
were afraid that we wouldnt have enough time.
And that was what happened. As soon as Id drunk a few mouthfuls, the armed
guards herded us back into line. They knocked the bowl out of my hands, the soup
was spilled and, feeling even hungrier now, I had to fall into line too.
Im lugging rocks again. They seem even heavier now. And the rain is even
more annoying. One rock slipped out of my hands, straight onto my foot.
I barely held out until the evening. On returning to the camp, we were given a
piece of bread each and some murky water coffee. I devoured it all right there
in the courtyard I couldnt bear to wait until I got up to the third floor.
No sooner have I got the knack of carrying rocks, than we have been ordered
to smash them. I cant do it, of course. I strike a blow, and the rock is still in one
piece. I strike harder, but only a little chip breaks off and it flies straight into my
face. My face is all bloody now, it hurts, and Im afraid of damaging my eyes. But
the guard yells and hurries me. One man offered to teach me how to do it, but the
guard wouldnt let him: I have to learn for myself. I close my eyes, weep with the
pain and strike
Its November already They brought a truckload of clogs. When they were
unloading them, I plucked up the courage to approach Hans. He ordered me to
show him my shoes. Then he ordered the clothing quartermaster to issue a pair of
clogs to me, and take away my shoes. I was sorry to part with them, the last thing
that I had from home, but what could be done if they were so badly torn?
In the storeroom they didnt even ask what size I needed. They grabbed the
first pair they could reach and tossed them to me. These clogs are far too big, but
its pointless to ask for any others theyll beat me for insolence. Ive stuffed
paper into them, so that my feet wont slip and Im going to wear them. These
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riches heavy lumps of wood, covered in oilcloth are also recorded in an

entry saying that Hftling 5007 was given a pair of clogs. Prisoner 5007 thats
me. First names and surnames dont exist here, theres only a number. Im used to
it and I answer to it. In the factory I mark the material that I have woven with the
same number. (I am already working without supervision.) A blue patch appears
every fifty metres along the fabric. At this point I have to cut off the material that
has been woven, write my number on it on both sides and hand it in. As I hand it
in, like everyone else, I hope to myself that this material will be used for bandages
by the Fascists.
At first, when I had only just learned to work without supervision, I tried
very hard and handed in fifty metres almost every day. Now Ive been taught
to sabotage to slacken a little screw a bit or nick a drive belt, so that the loom
breaks down. I call the mechanic and he rummages and fiddles about, fixes things,
and then writes down on my card how many hours the loom was standing idle.
Every day someones loom breaks down, and always in a different way.
I spoke to a woman from Riga who knew my aunt and uncle, who used to live
in Riga before the war. Unfortunately, theyre both already dead and gone. My
uncle was shot right at the beginning, and my aunt and their two children were
in the Riga ghetto. She was really starving, because she couldnt go out to work:
there was nowhere to leave the children. So she was taken to be shot with both
the boys.
Its terrifying to recall yesterdays horror, and I cant forget it. Yesterday,
when the men working on the construction site were on their way back from work,
they were searched thoroughly at the entrance: a guard claimed that he had seen a
passer-by slip some bread to someone. It was discovered on two men each one
had a slice. During the evening check this was reported to the Unterscharfhrer.
And when the check is over, instead of giving the command to break ranks,
the Unterscharfhrer orders both criminals to step forward, stand in front of
the ranks and take off their outer clothes. They hesitate theres snow falling, its
cold. But lashes from a whip compel them to obey. We are not permitted to look
away. We must watch, in order to learn a lesson for the future.
Two buckets of warm water are brought from the kitchen and poured over
their heads. The poor wretches shudder and their teeth chatter, they rub at the
underclothes still on their bodies, from which steam is rising, but in vain the
soldiers bring another two buckets of warm water. They pour these over the
unfortunate mens heads too. The men start jumping up and down, but that only
amuses the soldiers and the Unterscharfhrer.
The punishment is repeated every twenty minutes. Both men can hardly stand.
They dont look like men: the bald head of the older one is covered with a thin
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crust of ice and the hair of the younger one, which he tugs at and tousles, stands
up in solid icicles. Their underwear is a mass of ice and their legs are deathly
pale. The guards are splitting their sides with laughter. Theyre delighted by this
Christmas amusement. Each one of them gives advice on how to pour the water.
In his trousers, shouts one. Dunk his head! yells another.
The tortured victims try to turn away or recoil, but they are caught and put
back in their place, like animals brought to bay. And if even a little of the water
that is poured misses them, instead of enough to make up for the wasted few
drops, an entire bucket is brought. The wretches can only keep lifting their feet,
in order not to freeze to the ground.
I cant stand it! Ill go insane! What theyre doing is monstrous!
The Hitlerites finally got bored and we were ordered to break ranks. Hans
ordered that the two men were not to be excused from work the next day, even if
they had a temperature of 40o Celsius.
The older one died today. He fell down beside one of the wagons and didnt
get up again. The other man worked, although he could hardly stay on his feet and
was delirious with fever. When the guards couldnt see, his comrades tried to help
him to hold out somehow until work ended. Otherwise he was certain to be shot
The SS-men have invented a new punishment.
Perhaps it is not even a punishment, but simply mockery, an amusement.
It will be spring soon, and keeping us out in the frost is no longer so interesting.
After the check Hans ordered us to re-form our lines so that a space of one
metre would be left between the rows. Then he ordered us to crouch and jump. At
first we didnt understand what he wanted from us, but Hans roared so fiercely we
started jumping, even though we didnt understand him. I cant stay on my feet.
I can hardly breathe. But Hans rushes along between the lines, lashing us with
his whip and shouting at us not to shirk. We mustnt squat right down, we have to
jump, jump like frogs.
My heart is pounding, Im gasping for air! If only I could have just a moment
to catch my breath. Ive got a stitch in my side. My whole body hurts, I cant go
on! But Hans doesnt take his eyes off us.
One girl has fainted. Probably the same thing will happen to me soon. Hans
doesnt allow anyone to go over to the girl lying in a faint. Everyone must jump.
Another woman has fallen. She pleads for help, gesturing to show that she cant
speak. Someone shouts out in horror, Shes gone dumb!
Eventually Hans got tired too. He let us go. He told us not to pick up those
who were lying unconscious. Theyre faking, theyll get up on their own. But if
they have really fainted, it means they are weak and cant work, their numbers
have to be noted.
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We women grab hold of the unfortunates and drag them as far away as possible
from Hans. Unable to straighten up ourselves, almost on our hands and knees,
we drag along our friends who have still not recovered consciousness. But only as
far as the stairs. We cant get up the stairs. We sit on the stone floor and gulp in
air through our mouths. Several women try to crawl, but after struggling up a few
stairs they just stay sitting there. Im still gasping for breath, I cant start breathing
normally. I ask one woman to help me lean against the banister perhaps by
clinging on Ill get up a little way. But whats happening to me? I can hardly force
out a word. The more I try, the harder it is to say anything
Suddenly Hans appeared in the doorway. He surveyed us, spun round a bit
and asked, as if nothing had happened, why it was so quiet in here. After all,
today was Sunday, a day of rejoicing, we should be singing. We remain silent. A
song, he yelled spitefully, or youll be jumping! One woman started up a song
in a trembling voice and another started squeaking. A few more croaking voices
supported them timidly. I try. My mouth opens and salty tears stream into it
People have escaped again! This time from the silk factory, and not three, but
nine of them seven men and two women.
There is panic in the camp. That top boss is due to arrive here again. The
Unterscharfhrer dashes about like a madman. He yells at Hans that he doesnt
know how to line up these pigs properly. He threatens us, saying every single one
of us will be shot. He frightens the guards, saying that tomorrow they will be sent
to the front. He berates little Hans because there is so much dirt here. Seeing his
bosss car entering the camp, he falls silent. He runs to meet it, stands to attention
and shouts zealously, Heil Hitler! But his boss merely throws his arm out angrily.
This time he picks out the victims without even counting: he runs along the
line and jabs with his whip. Hes approaching us coming closer He raises his
hand The whip slid past right in front of my face. It jabbed at Masha. She took
three steps forward Theyll take her! . . . Theyll shoot her!
The boss walked over to the men and ordered those who worked in the silk
factory to form up in a single row. He counts off two and tells the third to step
forward, counts off two and tells the third to step forward. And the same for the
entire row
Those who were chosen have lined up in front of us. Masha is standing
there with them too. The boss makes a speech. He warned us: here everyone is
responsible for everyone else. Theres no reason at all for us to run off in any case.
We are provided with work, a roof and food, arent we? We only have to work well
and we could live. But the punishment for attempting to run off is death. Not only
for the culprits, who will be caught in any case, but for us too. Black trucks drove
into the courtyard
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At the camp we were greeted by deathly silence. We used to line up along the
whole length of the building, but today there were only enough of us to reach the
door
After the check we were given more work to do. The men brought water and we
washed the floors, the stairs, and even the roof we washed off the spots of blood.
Apparently, while the doomed prisoners were being herded to the trucks, the
men had made a run for it. Some had climbed over the wall, others had dashed
into the living quarters, the boiler room or the toilets. The guards had fired as they
chased them. In the living quarters and on the stairs they killed them on the spot.
Two were left hanging, lifeless, on the wall. They wanted to throw the man found
in the boiler room into the flames alive, together with the stokers who had hidden
him. But the one who caused them most trouble was a man from Riga, who hid
in the chimney. They simply couldnt get him out of there. They fired explosive
bullets and shattered his head. Then they dragged the body down the stairs and
flung it into a truck with the living victims. A lump of his brain was left in a puddle
of congealed blood on the stairs. We wrapped it in paper and buried it in the yard
by the wall. We set white stones there instead of a gravestone
Late in the evening they let us into our quarters. They are strangely empty. We
talk in low voices, as if there is a dead body here. We all lie down to sleep together,
in the same corner
An order has been received to evacuate the camp urgently
Officers stand at the gates. They count us again and let us in. At the entrance
the sentry repeats monotonously that it is forbidden to approach the fence its
electrified.
We walk into the first cage. They close the gates behind us. They open the next
gates, into another cage, exactly like the first. They close them again. They let us
through into a third cage. And so on and on, deeper and deeper into the camp.
When we walk past camp huts the prisoners start talking to us and asking where we
are from. Although the guards beat us for talking, we dont hold back and answer.
From the huts they speak to us in Russian, Polish and Yiddish. There are terribly
thin women, obviously ill, standing by one hut. They dont ask any questions, just
advise us to be wary of a certain Max
They brought us to the very last huts, 19 and 20. Several SS-men and one
civilian with a prisoners number were already standing there. This civilian shouted
at us to line up for a check and immediately started beating and kicking us. What
for? We were lining up, werent we, and he hadnt ordered us to do anything else.
I stood to attention and froze. But this civilian came flying up, and before I
could even tell who he was aiming at, I doubled over in terrible pain. And the SS-
men stood at one side, roaring with laughter.
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This fiend beat everyone, from one end of the line to the other, then combed
his hair, tucked his shirt back into his trousers and started counting us. But then
one of the officers remarked that it was time for dinner and they walked off, leaving
us standing there.
Several dozen women are standing at the other end of the line. They tell us about
life here, and every word they whisper is passed from mouth to mouth. They are
from Poland. Theyve only been in these quarters for a week, before that they were
somewhere else. Its worse in these quarters, because the foreman here is Max, the one
who was just beating us. Hes a devil in human guise. He has already beaten several
prisoners to death. Hes a prisoner too, he has already served more than ten years for
murdering his wife and children. The SS-men love him for his prodigious cruelty.
So this is what a genuine concentration camp is like! That means Strassdenhoff
was relatively tolerable
SS-men in black came and ordered us to line up and walk past them one at a
time, showing our legs. Those who had a very large number of abscesses on their
legs were dismissed immediately, but if a woman had relatively few, they checked
the muscles of her arms too.
I found myself in the healthier group. They lined us up and counted us. They
sent the three at the end of the line away in order leave an even number three
hundred. A guard opened the gates and led us into the next section. We sighed
in relief: at least we would be further away from the terrible Max. Now we are
separated off from the rest of our group by the wire. The poor souls stand by the
fence and gaze at us enviously: well go to work, but theyll be left here.
Someone started a rumour that they would send us to the peasants in the
village. The officers spoke about it among themselves. It obviously wouldnt be
worse. The rumour seemed to have been confirmed.
A guard came. He took ten women and asked if they knew how to milk cows.
Of course everyone hastened to assure him that they did. What if they ask me?
If I tell the truth, they wont take me. If I lie and say I know how, the truth will
soon become clear and theyll send me back to the camp. What should I do? I ask
the others what theyre going to say. But the women only laugh at my doubts.
The guards led out thirty-six women, including me. They gave each of us a
tattered soldiers blanket. Some people were waiting at the gates. They started
choosing us. They examine us, feel our muscles, ask if were idlers No one takes
any notice of me, they all walk past. Probably they wont take me and Ill have
to go back into that hell. Perhaps I should suggest that someone take me? The
others are doing it. I say, Ich bin stark Im strong, but no one hears me. Ich
bin stark, I repeat more loudly. Was, was? an old man asks. I start explaining
quickly that I want to work, that Im not lazy. Ja, gut! he replies and walks past
 282

But he obviously has second thoughts and comes back. He leads me to one side,
where three women he has selected are already standing.
An armed guard walks up, takes down our numbers and leads us after our
master. We walk along the same road by which we came here. The little houses are
still basking in the sunshine as cosily as ever. We get into a narrow-gauge railway
carriage. The guard keeps his eyes fixed on us. His bayonet glints menacingly just in
front of my face.
Our master is a short, bandy-legged, bald old man; his eyes are barely visible
slits in his face and his voice is hoarse and bad-tempered. He is obviously
dissatisfied with us. He complains to the guard that carrion like this will be no use
at all. He has already had four like us, they were from Hungary, but their strength
soon failed, and he had to take them straight to the crematorium. Now we were in
a sorry plight! And I, like a fool, had actually asked to be chosen.
The train stopped and we got out. It turned out that our master had left his two-
wheeled cart behind the station. The guard tied our hands and tied us to each other
as well. He took a seat up beside our master and we set off. The well-rested horse
jogged along at a trot. We had to run, otherwise the ropes would have cut into our
bodies. We gasped and panted, almost out of breath, but we were afraid to show
it: our master would say that we were weak and send us back immediately, to the
crematorium
At last we turned onto a narrow little road, jogged past a pond and found
ourselves in a large yard. A grand house, flaunting its magnificence, a green garden;
standing further away are a cowshed, a barn and stable. Clearly a prosperous farm.
Our master checked our numbers again and signed to say that he had accepted us
from the guard. As he untied our hands, he preached to us: it was our obligation
to work well and conscientiously, not to commit sabotage and not to attempt
to escape. For sabotage he would send us straight to the crematorium and if we
attempted to escape, he would shoot us on the spot. After frightening us like that,
he led us to the cubbyhole assigned to us. It was at the very back of the cowshed
and it was dark, because the light entered through a tiny little fly-spotted window.
Pigs grunted on the other side of the wall There are no straw mattresses or
pillows, only hay scattered in one corner. That is to be our bed. Its pointless to ask
for straw mattresses he wont give them to us in any case. I summoned up the
courage to say that we were very hungry, we hadnt eaten anything yet today. Our
master made a wry face and ordered me to follow him. In the inner porch he told
me to take off my shoes: I could only go into the kitchen barefoot. And we were
forbidden to enter the other rooms at all. I must tell my friends about that
If it wasnt for Raya, a woman from Riga, at least at this moment we could
forget our problems and stop tormenting our hearts. But she never stops talking
 283

for a moment. For the third time in these last few days she tells us in detail about
how she lost her child. In the Riga ghetto she was still with her husband and child.
When she found out that they were going to take away the children, she decided
to kill herself. Her husband gave the child an injection, then injected her and
himself Unfortunately, they woke up again. The child wasnt there. They didnt
even hear when he was taken. Now she is tormented by the fear that perhaps her
child woke up sooner than they did and wept because he was frightened, and he
tried to wake them, but they didnt hear Perhaps the executioners beat him and
twisted his little arms. After all, he probably tried to break out of their grip Her
husband almost lost his mind. He just couldnt understand why the poison hadnt
worked
They take us back to the camp
They led us to a bathhouse, ordered us to get undressed and let us into the
large outer room. When we walked in, we were stunned: sitting and even lying
directly on the stone floor were appallingly gaunt and wizened women, almost
skeletons, their eyes crazy with fear. Seeing the female overseers behind us, the
women started babbling in alarm that they were healthy, that they could work,
and pleading with the overseers to have pity. They held out their hands to us, so
that we could help them stand, and then the overseers would see that they could
still work
I stepped forward to help a woman sitting near me, but an overseer flung me
back. Rapping out her words imperiously, she ordered the women not to start
a panic they would all be washed and taken back to the camp. When they
recovered, they could go back to work. Everyone without exception had to get
washed: no one who was dirty would be allowed into the camp.
She ordered us to undress these women and take them into the next room, to
the shower. I feel nauseous from the terrible smell. I want to take off one womans
dress, but she cant stand up: her legs wont support her. I try to lift her up, but she
shrieks so loudly from the pain that I freeze. What can I do? I keep glancing at the
others. It turns out that they are having as much difficulty as I am. The overseers
give us a pair of scissors: if the clothes cant be taken off, they have to be cut off.
The scissors are passed from hand to hand. I get them too and I cut open the
dress. The emaciation beneath it is so extreme that I am afraid to touch it. The
bones are covered with nothing but dried-up, wrinkled skin. The woman absolutely
refuses to let me take off her shoes it will hurt her. I promise to slit open the
tops, but she wont let me touch her. She hasnt taken her shoes off for two weeks,
because her frost-bitten, suppurating feet have become glued to the material.
What should I do? The others have already undressed several women, but I
cant cope with one. The overseer clearly noticed this. She ran over, hit me on the
 284

head and grabbed the poor wretchs feet. The woman let out a piercing scream.
I look and I see the overseer holding two shoes with lumps of rotting flesh stuck
to the material. I vomited. The overseer burst into frenzied yelling, but I didnt
understand her very well
When the overseer turned away, I asked one woman where she was from.
From Czechoslovakia. A doctor. They took her to Stutthof and then, just like us,
she was taken out to work. They dug trenches, They worked, standing up to the
waist in water. They slept on the ground. When their frostbitten hands and feet
started suppurating, they were taken back to the camp
An epidemic! It will seize everyone in its grip, regardless of their age or their
appearance. Typhoid fever makes no distinctions And apart from that, of
course, they wont give us any treatment. Its even possible that they infected
us deliberately, so that we would all die. Could it be that appalling soup thats
making us ill? Perhaps its not pepper that makes it so spicy?
How can I protect myself? How can I find the strength not to eat that soup,
our only food? How can I learn not to eat anything, anything at all, not even to
suck this filthy snow? I think Im falling ill. My head feels heavy and its buzzing.
During the checks they support me by the arms so that I dont fall. Could it really
be typhoid?
I was ill The women tell me that in my delirium I sang little songs and cursed
the Hitlerites in terrible language. They had never even suspected that I knew
such offensive words. Its a good thing I have a weak little voice, and the Hitlerites
dont come in here any more theyre afraid of getting infected. For words like
that they would have shot me on the spot.
But I feel ashamed for swearing. I explain that in our family no one ever My
fathers a lawyer. The women smile at my explanations
They say that Ive pulled through. Im over the illness. But I think theyre
wrong. It was probably something else, not really typhoid. After all, typhoid is a
terrible illness. I wouldnt have recovered so easily, without any medicine, people
stronger than I am die, dont they? But the women explain that typhoid actually
overwhelms the ones with strong bodies, who have never been ill and therefore
are not used to fighting illness. If only Mama knew that the torment she suffered
with my childhood bouts of scarlet fever, jaundice and pleurisy has saved me!
I crawled out into the yard on all fours to wash myself with snow. I cant stand
up green circles keep flaring up in front of my eyes.
This is a genuine death camp. The Hitlerites no longer maintain order. There
are no checks: they are afraid to come in. They dont give us anything to eat. We
even get the so-called soup only once every two or three days. Sometimes they
bring us two frostbitten little potatoes each instead. Its a very long time since
 285

we last saw any bread. But Im terribly hungry: Im beginning to recover. Were
tormented by lice. We crush them without feeling embarrassed any longer. But
unfortunately there are still just as many of them.
Beautiful Ruth has died. Her feet started festering, and then her hands. And
now she has died She didnt get up at all recently. But in Strassdenhoff she was
still so lovely! Always cheerful, never giving way to despondency. How strongly
she believed that we would live to see victory, and she would meet her husband!
Now they will shove her, horribly bloated, into the crematorium oven. And thats
it. Youth, beauty and love of life will be reduced to ashes
Someone assures me that its the New Year already. They heard a sentry
wishing an overseer a Happy New Year.
So 1945 is here The war is certain to come to an end this year. Theyre
already finishing off the Hitlerites, arent they? But Theres a good reason why
they say that a mortally wounded animal is doubly to be feared. Could we really
become the victims of its death agony? Its not possible! Why think that they will
definitely kill us as they retreat? Perhaps they wont have enough time? And then
we shall be free! Perhaps Mama and the children are in some camp somewhere?
Theyll be set free too. And Papa will come back
Raya, with whom I worked for the wealthy farmer, tells me that she heard
from the man who distributes the soup, that last night there was a fire at the
crematorium. The gas chamber was burnt out. Its assumed that someone set fire
to it. It wont save us in any case.
How horrible! I was sleeping huddled up against a corpse. During the night,
of course, I didnt feel it. It was very cold, and I snuggled against the back of the
woman next to me. I stuck my hands under her armpits. I thought she stirred,
allowing them in. But in the morning she turned out to be dead
An overseer came. She ordered everyone who had already recovered from the
illness to line up. Thinking that they would be sent to work, the sick women tried
to stand up too. But she spotted the trick immediately. There were very few of us.
The overseer picked out eight (including me) and announced that we would be
the burial detachment. Up to this point everything had been chaotic, with those
who had died lying in the huts for several days. Now we had to undress the dead
immediately and tear out their gold teeth, then four of us had to carry them out
and put them by the door of the hut. Every morning and evening the camp burial
detachment would drive by and take away the bodies
We walk up to one woman who died this morning. I take hold of her cold leg,
but I cant lift it, although the dead womans body is completely withered; the
others are already lifting her, but I cant manage it. The overseer slaps me across
the face and hands me a pair of scissors and pliers: I shall have to undress the body
 286

and tear out the gold teeth. But if I dare to purloin even one, I shall be dispatched
to join my ancestors, together with my patients
The dead womans gold teeth glitter in her mouth, as if she is sneering at me
derisively. What should I do? I cant tear them out. Glancing round to check if
the overseer can see, I quickly squeeze the mouth shut with the pliers. She wont
check, after all. But the overseer` has noticed anyway. She hits me so hard that
I fall across the corpse. I jump back up. But thats exactly what shes waiting for
she starts beating me with some kind of very heavy stick. Always aiming at my
head. It feels as if my head will split in two, but the overseer doesnt stop. Theres
blood on the floor
She beat me for a long time, until she started gasping for breath herself
We have already been in Strelentin for a week. Its a former country estate
They keep us locked in the cowsheds
There was a terrible, thunderous crash. We heard muffled explosions, one
after another. The guards dog sitting beside us pricked up its ears warily. And the
Hitlerites we could see near the shed started bustling about. Some look up at the
sky, others start arguing with each other Whats this? The guards are rolling
barrels towards the shed! Were going to be burned alive!
They let us into the shed. There are a lot of women in there, not only from
our camp. Dying women and dead women are lying on the ground, in the mixture
of chaff, hay and dung. They are beyond caring about anything Should I tell
them or not? Ill keep quiet. That way, if they dont know, theyll be calmer. No,
Ill tell them. At least one of them. I whisper this terrible secret to the woman on
my left. But she doesnt seem to understand. Or she didnt hear the thunderous
explosions are all around us. I tell another one. She screams, dashes to a chink
in the door and looks many others are overcome by horror too. They all start
hammering and rushing about. But no one can see anything. There are no guards.
A droning sound. Its coming closer! Aeroplanes? Someone is shaking me by
the shoulders. Who is it? That Hungarian woman again. She asks if I understand
Polish? She shouts that the Red Army is already in the village and the Hitlerites
have run away Why all this noise? Why is everyone crying? Where are they
running to? Theyll trample me into the ground! Help me get up, dont leave me
here alone!
No one takes any notice of me. Clutching their heads in their hands or reaching
out their arms out in front of them, the women run, shouting something. Tripping
over the dead, they fall, but immediately get up and run out of the shed. But I
cant get up.
I can hear mens voices behind the shed. Red Army men? Is it really them? I
want to go there, to them! How can I get up?
 287

The Red Army men run into the shed. They hurry towards us, looking for the
living and helping them to get up. They doff their caps before those who no longer
need their help. Need help, little sister?
They lift me up and set me on my feet, but I cant move, my legs are trembling.
Two Red Army men join hands to form a chair, sit me on it and carry me.
Ambulances are dashing from the village to the shed, Red Army men are
running this way. One offers to help carry me, another holds out some bread to
me, a third gives me his gloves. And the kindness makes me so happy that my tears
simply pour down of their own accord. The soldiers reassure me and comfort me,
and one takes out a handkerchief and wipes away my tears as if Im a little child.
Dont cry, little sister, we wont let anyone hurt you any more!
And glittering on his cap is a little red star. How long it is since I last saw it!
In the
thIrd reIch:
Diaries
of the
abDucteD
 29 0

Literate slaves
According to data published at the Nurnberg trials, during the war 4,479,000 civilians
were forcibly displaced from the USSR to Germany. The precise number of children who
were exported as cost-free labour power, or rather, as slaves, is not known, But it is generally
accepted that they made up at least 30 per cent of the numbers.
These Russian youngsters are genuine brutes, a German woman who ran a respectable
farm wrote to her husband on the Eastern Front. They were sent to us recently and I set
them to mind the pigs. One boy contrived to steal the skimmed milk that I had prepared for
the piglets and drank it, for which he was punished with a beating. Another boy dug up earth
worms and ate them. For some reason the one who stole the milk also tried to filch a pencil
and paper
Dry facts without emotions can sometimes be far more frightening than the most
eloquent descriptions. Here is an example from a German circular: An adult Ostarbeiter or
concentration camp prisoner, whose life expectancy is 1 year, brings in 1,650 Reichsmarks
in net profit. In addition to his actual work, the items of income also include the recycling
of bone, hair and subcutaneous fat. A child brings in about 1,200 Reichsmarks, since he
has less subcutaneous fat and hair, and survives no longer than half a year on heavy work.
These facts are confirmed by the lines in a letter written to her father by Katya Susanina,
which survived by a miracle: When you come back, dont look for Mama, the Germans shot
her. When they interrogated her about you, the officer struck her on the face with a whip.
Then he shot Mama in the mouth. I was fifteen years old today. If you met me now, you
wouldnt recognise your daughter. Ive become very thin. When I cough, I cough up blood.
My lungs have been battered and beaten. I am the German Schirlins slave. There is a lot
of work, and I eat twice a day, in the trough with Rosa and Klara. Thats what my mistress
calls the pigs. Its what the baron ordered. Im afraid of Klara, shes a big, greedy pig. Once
she nearly bit off my finger. I live in the shed. Ive tried to run away twice. Then the baron
himself tore off my clothes and kicked me. When I passed out, they poured a bucket of water
over me and flung me into the cellar
Those who survived in these circumstances stole not only food from their masters, but
also writing materials. Because fighting is one form of courage, and letting others know the
truth is another, perhaps even more terrifying.
 292

Ostarbeiter Vasya Baranov from the village of Merenovka in the Starodub District of
the former Oryol, now Bryansk Region, started keeping his diary a pile of reversed goods
train schedule forms threaded together with string two days after he arrived in the German
city of Dresden. He and Olya, the girl he loved, who had been in the seventh class in a
nearby village, had arrived at Biaystok in adjacent railway goods cars, but there they were
separated. At times it seemed that they had been separated forever: life hung by a thread
How many more months can I survive in this slavery? Vasya wrote. He tried to escape,
but failed. We went to the factory again, Im exhausted, I feel that I wont survive, my legs
are buckling under me, theres a hammering in my head. I desperately want not to starve
to death. Yesterday Gay died, they took him off somewhere in a truck. Am I really going to
die like that? Vasya had to hide his diary: under the lining in the bottom of a suitcase, in
a crack beside his bunk Yes, I took a risk, and not out of courage, but more likely out of
carelessness. But I treasured the diary. It was my talisman. I rushed into a burning hut to
get it, Vasily Maksimovich said later in the book by P. Polyan and P. Pobol, They Forbade
us the Light of Day, in which his diary was published for the first time.
In it lines like the following are devoted to Olya: How long my soul has cried out to
be free, How long my heart burned with loves ardent flame. My one love, Olya was so dear
to me, And now I must forget her name. But I cant frame it in rhyme any more. My head
wont do it, yes I did love her, but I turned out badly, she decided I was a failure and a fool.
Yes, she is right. She is right about many things Could she really be suffering this badly
too? The memories oppress my heart even more painfully. In Germany Vasya Baranov
managed to trace his Olya, who was working her fingers to the bone at an aircraft factory:
she received two letters from him, which she still keeps to this day.
They carried their love through two and a half years of separation and helpless existence
in a foreign land. They were married a year after they returned to Starodub. They had a son
and a daughter. Vasily Maksimovich learned to play the clarinet and for the rest of his life he
taught in a music school in the city of Bryansk. Olga Timofeevna taught Russian language
and literature. We lived a good life, we loved each other she says, now that she is left
alone. Her husband kept his diary and used to reread it until the day he died. He would
open it, read it and cry After all, its real life!
 293

1943
In the morning at about 9 our livestock wagon was opened from all sides. And
I was woken by a bright ray of sunlight , the weather was genuinely remarkable.
We found out immediately that we had already arrived in Dresden. After a long
rigmarole they lined us all up with our things and three armed guards led us
thought the streets of great Dresden An hour later, after lunch, they lined us
up and divided us into three groups, then picked out the specialists, of whom
there were very few. The Germans ran about, shouting and establishing order,
and eventually a German came over to our third of the group and translated to
us that we would be going to a quite different city that was called Leipzig. And
so that evening 91 of us were delivered by electric locomotive to a main station
with a dome that is similar to the dome of our church Merinovo. The station
seemed impossible to get through to me, since there were endless numbers of
people (Germans) walking in from above and below. You could see your fill of
different kinds of new sights here, without going to the church or the museum,
for instance, the sights of sculptures, pictures, the shades of the chandeliers, the
Germans themselves, their clothes and so on. And at the same time I felt a kind
of loathing for them so that I couldnt focus my gaze attentively on the features of
their faces, because I had already understood them and they had already revealed
themselves to me. Suddenly they drove up a huge kind of tractor on big rubber
rollers with a big trailer, loaded all our things onto it, sat half of us on the things
and drove away. And we got off beside a two-storey building on a corner. It was
eleven oclock in the evening already when they gave us our places on the first
floor, giving everyone a bed, a mattress and a blanket. I wanted to sleep very badly.
Finally they checked all 91 of us and one respectable-looking man who
was Ukrainian by nationality announced that we should sleep. Before that they
checked thoroughly that everyone spent some time under the tap and undressed
to his underwear, everyone was dirty and tattered and barefoot, like a flock of
sheep that has torn itself out of a wolfs jaws. Two of us got hit in the face, and I
went to sleep gritting my teeth so hard that they hurt.
After dinner we went to the bathhouse for decontamination.
6 September, Monday. Early in the morning everyone handed in the postcards
they had written yesterday, on which it said in big letters it: Anyone who has seen
Germany must love it. How repulsive and untrue it was. Could I love it? No,
never. Illnesses have sprung up among us. A tall, pale young lad called Strelsky
used to work across from my table. He did absolutely nothing at all, just leaned
on the table and cried because his head hurt. The German foremen didnt believe
him, they took him to the first aid post, took his temperature, gave him pills,
but nothing did any good and they beat him on the face. It was all so pitiful. I
 294

felt I could just fling a file at the idiot at any moment. It was the same with the
others who were sick. Now I realise that we Russians are genuine slaves for the
Germans
8, 9, 10 September How much longer can I survive in this slavery? My legs
are already buckling from standing every day, since they dont let us sit down,
they beat us on the face for that. No, I have to escape, Ive decided. And I decided
to persuade the Commissar to go, since hes a bold young fellow and he speaks
German too. He accepted my invitation and we decided to go to the station on
Sunday to find a train going to Poland, climb into the coal and ride for as long as
our patience holds out.
11 September, Saturday. Im feeling a bit better today, since its Sunday
tomorrow and perhaps theyll let us out of the city, and if theres any chance
Ill try to escape. After all, theres no need to be afraid, especially since the
Commissar speaks German. The only bad thing is that we havent got any food,
but thats not important, because we wont be travelling on the train for long, we
just have to get across Poland, since if the Poles find a Russian, theyll hand him
over immediately. But I think well hold out until we reach the Ukraine, and after
all a man can go two weeks without eating, and we just need to get there at least
half-alive.
After finishing work at 1 we went to the camp, where we washed the cupboards,
did the laundry and prepared for tomorrow. I got ready everything good that I
have to wear and took a bag. In the evening they gave us 15 cigarettes
17, 18, 19 September, Sunday. Weve been genuinely hungry recently. There
are thefts happening every day, and the thieves arent found. The rations get worse
day by day. They gave us 15 cigarettes and 60 pfennigs for a week. Sunday goes
past very quickly. That brings up two feelings. The first is a feeling of joy that its a
day off work, you can meet some of the old Russian lads, and especially the girls.
The other feeling is one of exasperation, especially if I talk to a fellow-countryman
from only 300500 kilometres away, it really makes my heart ache, I feel like Im
going to fall ill with consumption, or something bads going to happen to my
heart. The best thing is to have a talk with a girl, especially a Russian, after all,
a womans organism isnt so resilient because, as they write in the novels, more
women have died and poisoned themselves out of love than men. But even so the
men and the women who have lived here for a year or a year and a half tell you the
same thing, that after a while you get used to it, you want to live, you have to live,
dyings an easy trick, but life is precious. Todays a day off work, everyone went
into town apart from the offenders being punished. I sold 10 cigarettes for 1 mark
and some baked potatoes to a man from Dnepropetrovsk who has already been
working at the station for a year as railway labourer. After I found the Commissar
 295

A badge on his chest, a number instead of a

name in the German circulars for two and a half
years Vasya Baranov from the Russian village of
Merenovka was a German slave, an Untermensch,
a russischer Schwein, as the good German citizens
called him and thousands like him

But after his return from Germany he learned to

play the clarinet and devoted his entire life to art.
And also to the girl he loved, Olya, who had been
through the same German hell.
Photo from the personal archive of P. Polyan.
29 6

we went to a small goods station. I put on a second pair of trousers, two shirts, a
jacket and boots, and I took a bag. The dispatch notice on one wagon said it was
going to Lvov and we climbed in between the crates and waited for the train to go.
The train finally set off in the evening and we were really delighted, but suddenly
from the setting sun we realised that we were travelling west. Maybe it will double
back, we thought, and carried on like that for about half an hour. We jumped
out in despair at a little station where there were no Germans nearby. Railway
workers were filing past the wagons and one of them noticed us. There was no
way out of it, since there were Germans everywhere behind us, he led us to a
railway hut and ordered a little old man to keep an eye on us. Just then the phone
rang, the old man went to answer to it and we took our chance and flitted off. On
our way through the village we met a western Ukrainian who was driving some
draught horses. He told us that it was 17 km to Leipzig. It was already 10 oclock
in the evening. We decided to get back to our camp no matter what
23 September, Thursday. The rain keeps pouring down all the time, although
the pavement isnt wet, but these damned shackles are so heavy. It will soon be
a month since I first put them on, but I still just cant get used to them, and Im
not going to get used to them. These idiots arent going to train me to accept
barbaric treatment like this. Theyre trying to introduce divisions among us, and
that causes all sorts of incidents. Fights over rotten cabbage and rotten, wormy
salad. I often try to calm the lads down and quite a lot of them sympathise with
me. At dinner some have started trying to grab an extra serving. A Polish woman
smacked a Belorussian over the head with her ladle with all her might. He was
left covered in blood, hanging on the men who were pushing their way in. When
they saw that the Germans and the Poles laughed maliciously, calling us pigs,
then they started driving us out to work. One Russian got four potatoes for a fake
coupon and he was beaten half to death. He couldnt work, they kept hitting him
on the face all the time, as if they were either trying to bring him round or finish
him off completely
24, Friday. 25, Saturday. Everyones planning to escape from Germany,
theyve told me a lot about the past and the present, and the future thats in store
for us, many of them cried on their beds. My hearts breaking into five pieces.
We read the newspapers and found out that our area has been taken back by the
Russians and the Germans are starting to run from Stalingrad. What a good feeling
that suddenly gives me. Guys! If only we could get back to the motherland right
now, and to the front besides, wed rip their throats out with our very souls, not
just our weapons
26, Sunday. This morning it rained, they brought breakfast to the camp, we
walked to the factory for dinner, at 6 they let us out into the town and I met
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another Russian from the Ponurov district, Pyotr Ivantsov. The two of us talked
about escape and he assured me that its absolutely impossible to get away! He
tried to run away twice and it was for nothing, he only damaged his health, and
to be honest he doesnt seem like a stupid man to me, he certainly knows a thing
or two and he knows the Germans ways. He dresses decently. He says he has a
very hard life, but then why is he so strong in spirit? Thats what shook me most of
all. And basically all the old men are strong-spirited. My soul has rotted through
seven times over, its turned sour from all this endless anxiety and thinking. I
think so highly of this fellow-countryman of mine Ive never valued anyone in
my life so much, not my father or my mother, as I value this friend at the present
time. So, Im back locked inside the camp
3 October, Sunday

How long my soul has cried out to be free,

How long my heart burned with loves ardent flame.
My one love, Olya, was so dear to me,
And now I must forget her name.

I cant frame it into rhyme any more. My head wont do it, yes I did love her,
but I turned out badly, she decided I was a failure and a fool. Yes, she is right. She
is right about many things. Firstly, Im a failure, because Im suffering here like
this. 2 maybe I actually do some harm, but in any case I havent done even a
kopecks worth of good for Germany. Because I learned metalwork at school. But
even so there is some little help, for instance, in loading scrap metal beams, and
Im a failure, which means that Im a fool as well. Could she really be suffering
this badly too? She left Biaystok ahead of me, and probably with the girls from
Merinovo. The memories oppress my heart even more painfully
16 October, Saturday. Almost the entire shift took off into town and wandered
around until about 10 in the morning. At half past eleven we had to go to the
factory. As always, following Karbots old order (hes a Pole), we had to run
downstairs like a pack of dogs and line up. If anyone didnt manage it in a minute
we all had to climb back up to the first floor and run again. Today hes especially
spiteful because the men took off into town and he got so brutal that many of
them couldnt run at all any more, and they caught it hot from him. Its just plain
bullying, he finds it interesting. This man has sunk to the level of a beast. We had
spinach for dinner. I managed to buy a kilogram of bread for 8 marks from a lathe
hand, even though it wasnt good German bread, it had something else mixed
into it. So today my stomachs feeling a bit happier. I ate about half a kilo of salt.
For some reason everyones started eating a lot of salt, its a good thing these
 298

idiots have lots of salt everywhere. Although they do say that eating it is very bad
for you
21 October, Thursday I have this appalling, sad feeling. I abuse myself
for being so dozy and short of energy. I curse my behaviour and my character.
Recently its as if Ive come down with lazy disease. You wont ever hear a single
word from me all day long. And my words have been incoherent and awkward
anyway. The others are all cold towards me and unhelpful. Life is becoming
unbearable, but I wouldnt want to die without any point to it at all. No. Ill wait
for my moment and go out with a bang
27 October, Wednesday . . . The lads have been talking about a mass break-
out from the camp. They told me that yesterday Kulikov and Maslennikov got
away. The foremen have already asked about them, but the Pole doesnt know
for sure yet that they escaped. I was in favour of having a mass escape too. Even
though theyll catch most of us, it will be easier for a few individuals to get away
30 October, Saturday. Although the first shift today works until 1 oclock,
Ill have to work until 3 in the kitchen. We went to get beetroots. Working in the
kitchen, I got to see the faces of those detestable Poles even better. Some Russians
there were real little idiots too. Theyre prepared to sell a man for the sake of their
own lives. One Belorussian from Mogilyov who liked the idea of licking out the
cauldron, betrayed his fellow-Belorussian, Vavilov, who got what was coming to
him from the Pole. That evening he wouldnt let the first shift cook anything and
demanded cigarettes for it, although he had been given three, but that wasnt
good enough for him. The whole hut is in uproar, some are complaining that
the beetroots have been stolen, some are cursing, there are whole truckloads
of peelings on the tables, in the garden and in the dormitory the sick men are
whining, downstairs theyre eating round the cauldron and arguing. What a life, it
would be hard to imagine for anyone who died before me.
31 October, Sunday Walking to the camp I saw Ivanovets , who was looking
for the girl who gave him Anna Karenina last Sunday. In the evening I went to
the next camp with Gurtovets, and there was an accordion playing there. When
I went in I saw girls dancing. They were dancing a waltz. I felt a pang in my
heart. There were chairs all around and in one half of the room there were shelves
and tables. It was obvious from the room that a lot of our fellow Russians lived
here. The accordionist was playing in the middle. Beside him was a little drum
on a chair and a big drum with cymbals, which a gloomy-looking fellow was
beating raggedly. After the waltz he sang a song about Moscow and some other
songs about the Soviet Union. This seemed like an angelic life to me, what
fortunate people there were in the world! I played two dances a krakowiak and
a two-step . . .
 29 9

7 November, Sunday. Long live Russia. Death to the Fascists and the Poles. I
woke up early and lay on my bed for a long time. The weather is hazy. From early
morning it was quiet in the camp hut, with men talking among themselves here
and there, but mostly lying there in silence, each one thinking about something,
but it wasnt hard to guess what After the assembly we went to dinner. As we
walked, we sometimes sang Soviet songs quietly, but we still felt dead anyway.
As if it wasnt a holiday at all, no one could feel cheerful, everyone was dejected.
But what could we do? No one could answer that. And I dont think any genius
in my place right now or in the lines of lads would have been able to answer. All
our hopes have collapsed. All thats left is to surrender to fate, and then you can
hold out some way at least. We ate our cabbage without salt and went back to be
locked in the camp. The grief has gnawed through our veins. There was silence
for a long time, all you could hear was scabby Belorussians scratching themselves.
My entire being is filled with horror. I tried to start writing several times, but
nothing hangs together. I started reading, but that doesnt work either. I went
to Pyotr Golushko. I had decided to confide in him, after all hes no fool, and
we decided to take our minds off everything by singing. The first song was The
morning paints with gentle light The entire hut joined in with us and all 90
voices barked it out. But the third song was sung just by me and a couple of feeble
croakers. We all began to freeze again. Lots of us were snoring. It was starting to
get dark already. Could some other man living in extremely hard circumstances,
but in a different part of the world imagine my true state of mind
11 November, Thursday. It has been raining all day. Weve been stuck here,
locked in the camp. There are rumours going round that there was a meeting
between the warring states and Germany was forced to give up the countries
it occupied. Any little piece of news is a cause for joy, especially one like that.
Everyones ecstatic about it. After all, if we could get back to Russia, they already
know about our sufferings, dont they? They would look at us like miraculous
people. But we cant get by without vengeance against the butchers. We got to the
factory at half past 3, and at 4 the siren sounded. We ran to the camp cellar, while
we were running I got so tired I was barely even alive, my shackles have got too
heavy for me. Ten minutes later the alert was over. We walked back to the factory,
I was exhausted, I felt as if I wouldnt survive. My legs were buckling under me,
there was a hammering in my head. I want so badly not to starve to death, to get
at least one a good bite at a Pole. Gay died yesterday, they sent him off somewhere
on a truck. Am I really going to die like that?
13 November, Saturday. Endless rain. Until 3 oclock the camp was locked.
Scabies or mange has affected the entire camp. Hardly anyone doesnt have
it. Shmavganets is so badly disfigured that he doesnt look human, and he has
30 0

Kruglikov and Vasilev beside him, along with the other Belorussians. They smell
so bad, Im afraid to go near their corner. They block them off from the wash-
basin, the table and other things. Vasilev has been raving all day today, hes very
sick. When we got to the factory we worked the same way as before, the factory
gates were closed, but the guys slipped in through a gap behind the electric welder.
One of them snitched on us and got a thrashing from a German in glasses. A 12-
hour working day gets very boring, you get terribly sleepy. We got together in the
toilet and talked. I told the story of Gorkys My Universities But then Karbot
noticed we were missing and scattered us like a crowd of sparrows.
14 November, Sunday. It rained heavily until dinner. After dinner there was
a blizzard. Another Russian came to the camp and said that the rations for all the
Russian camps had been cut back, since the Germans had surrendered part of the
Ukraine to our forces, and they didnt even have enough bread for six months
for themselves. The Germans are already writing that they are beating back the
pressure from the enemy on the Don and the Volga and especially at Stalingrad.
Japan has concluded a peace with China. Early in the evening I met that same
Ukrainian girl. She was very poorly, or rather, lightly dressed, she was cold. I ran
into the hut and threw my womans coat to her out of the window. She was so glad
that she didnt know how to thank me and promised to find some way. I didnt
want anything from her, because her life was no better than mine. The coat fitted
as if it had been made for her. Some of the boys guessed that it was my coat, but
I pretended that it wasnt. I went back into the hut and spent a long time reading
Alexei Tolstoys Peter the Great. That night I dreamed about Stalin, who said the
war would soon be over, he was wearing a Red Army greatcoat and holding rifle
and when I said I would go with him, he forbade me to, and when he left, I felt
bad because I didnt go after him
16 November, Tuesday. Today I feel my weakness very keenly. The shackles
started feeling so heavy that I dragged them along without lifting my feet. Just
another couple of hard blows and I wont survive any longer. I remember Pushkin:
Out on the open highroad the Lord has promised I shall die. When I looked in
the mirror, I was so unlike myself that I was amazed. As white as snow, a sharp,
pointed head, wild eyes buried deep, a hideously skinny nose, yellow teeth, no
hair, a face covered in stubble. I looked like a man 4550 years old who has been
ground down by captivity. Thats what they turn a man into in about two and a
half months. Agh! Dear Mother, if you could just see me now. What I have been
reduced to by the Fascists and their sycophantic minions, the Polish beasts
19 November, Friday. The day has come and we have been told to get ready.
Out of the Starodub group, only Drozd, Golushko and Khoteev are left. In the
factory we handed in all our official equipment, only the fetters were left to us
 301

in perpetuity. They gave everyone 1 mark and 44 pfennigs and took away our
identity cards. Then we walked to the camp and carried out a general clean-up.
After that we waited for special instructions. At about 3 oclock two gentlemen
came. The Pole said that they would be our camp commandant and interpreter.
We walked about two kilometres with them. We got into a special tram and rode to
our destination. A strange picture met my eyes. No town, or buildings or houses
anywhere around. Of course, it was dark already. All we could see through the
darkness were camp huts like the ones at Biaystok. Nothing but open country all
around. It was the movement of the tram that made me believe there were people
here. In the darkness we walked up to a fence several huge rows of barbed wire
a Polizei with a gun let us through and I felt terrified, thinking I would never
walk out again. All 76 of us were led into the long corridor of a hut with rooms
on both sides. From the voices speaking I realised that there were Russians and
Ukrainians here. They looked at us contemptuously and reproached us, saying,
Look, even more of them piling in with their bundles, youll soon find out what
its like living here! When we were still walking up to the camp the whistling
and stamping sounded like devils in hell, the way I used to imagine them from
my grandmothers stories. But now it got even louder, as if the needle of the dial
was stuck right over at maximum. When the places were given out all of us from
Starodub stuck together. There were 12 places short, so we had to sleep two to a
bed From what people said, I found out that there was a lot of thieving here
and this was called a punishment camp, all the offenders from the city of Leipzig
were sent here. We were 4 km from the city. There were about 3,000 people in
the camp. I followed a girl and got some soup. People were running this way and
that way, like ants, holding bowls and sometime shouting out keep right, and
swearing in the most obscene manner. Keep right, f**k you, or Ill empty this
bowl over your head All the men here were brutalised and nothing at all like
the Russians I used to know in Russia.
23 November, Tuesday Today they gave me a number on my neck 257905
25 November. They herded us into the camp from the factory after six. The
camp was close by, about 300 metres. Between the camp and the factory there
were earthwork bomb shelters. On the other side of the Russian camp was the
Belgian camp, and then the French camp, and then wide-open country, with
Leipzig only visible in the distance. I got some beetroot soup, then went to sleep.
I was woken by a friend to go and steal beetroots. I stole two small ones and a
Polizei hit me hard on the cheek. In the evening we went to the factory.
There wasnt any foreman, a Pole set me on turning badges. The Pole drove
me on all the time, swore and said he would smash my face. I told him life meant
nothing to me and in that case I could kill him, and that made him a bit frightened
302

of me. He said he would tell the foreman that I didnt work, but I sat there for
almost two hours before some German drove me away. The Pole complained to
him. I got a punch in the face from the German, but the Pole didnt come near
me for a long time, afraid of being killed.
We were unloading turnips and I managed to steal one. Just recently Ive been
lucky with stealing. Ive learned how to steal very skilfully
28 November 1943, Sunday. Stealing is my main activity now. Whatever
it might be, I have to filch it. Because death is already dogging my footsteps.
Yesterday someone died in room 2, a young guy from the same region as Volodya.
Cases of people starving to death are nothing new here. And then there are some
guys who live well, but there are less than ten of them out of three thousand. They
go out at night, like bandits, to do their business. Although its dangerous, its
profitable. Im not like that. I just cant sell those hard-to-find things that they
get, although it is perfectly possible. Today the lads opened a barbers shop. I had
a haircut too. I stole a turnip.
Most of the guys went off into town through the Belgian huts. I didnt go, I
wouldnt get anything, Im no good at it, and I could get caught. I slipped out of
the camp and walked through the field to collect beetroots. Suddenly a polizei
noticed us and we had to sit there until three, when the lads being punished came
back from work, then in the semidarkness the three of us mingled with them so
deftly that the snot-nosed polizei didnt even catch on. The lads sat by the stove
all evening and all night, cooking beetroots. The men have become good thieves,
everyone was fierce and reckless
11 December, Saturday Mishka came to me and we talked a lot, baking
beetroots and eating them. Before evening came I washed my underwear (my
first laundry in this camp). The lice have run wild, you can often pull several of
them out at once, especially from under your belt. They dart around this way and
that on Partisans blanket like ants on an anthill. The men made fun of him. He
turned out to be a real weirdo. Tall and bony, with a long nose, just like Gorkys
Chelkash. He went around in a long, tattered army cloak that covered several jars
that he hooked onto his belt. He poured all sorts of gruel and such into them that
the French didnt finish up where he worked (in the city). Two polizei and the
commandant walked through the rooms, looking for a dangerous prisoner (they
found him)
16 December, Thursday A rumour has started up that yesterday three
dangerous prisoners escaped in aeroplanes. They were levelling out the aerodrome
and when the polizei turned away, they hopped into a plane that had just been
fuelled and flew off. They were even fired at somewhere beyond the city. Now,
thats the kind of smart guy I understand. I think theyre already in Russia
 303

19 December, Sunday. Today is a traditional holiday, St Nicholas. We used to

call it our patron saints day. Usually we ate breakfast very late on this day. Today
Im celebrating it in prison. They brought five of us here and put us in the cells.
Its the first time in my life that I have ever breathed the air of prison, which has
something otherworldly about it. The cell was very high, but narrow. There was
a fan set above the bars, and one by the door too. Thats done in order to freeze
people like me. It was so cold that after about half an hour I couldnt feel my
hands or my feet or my back any longer. I could hear someone in the next cell
banging his head against the wall, and I started following his example and doing
exercises too, sometimes just banging against the wall with fury, as if I was trying
to kill myself, so I wouldnt have to live. In the darkness I stumbled over a wooden
board that was lying on the concrete floor. (it was the only board in all the cells.)
I lay down on it. I dont remember how long I lay there, I know I was raving and
at the same time shuddering with cold. I had a delirious vision that our family had
already had dinner and theyd left me some pancakes with fatty bacon and I ate
them up quickly.
My legs froze completely stiff . I got up and started doing my exercises again.
I took off one fetter and tried to warm up my foot with the warm air from my
mouth. But that didnt do any good either. My mouth was cold. The fans were
working well. I think that if I didnt already have fair hair, it would have turned
light by now. When I could already see clearly, I found someones documents
and a photo under my bed. I found an Italian cigarette case. The day passed by
in agonising cold and the night was the same. Here was the night passing by and
it was a day and a half since I had anything in my stomach and it was cold. Acute
exhaustion, another day and night of this and it would be death. It felt as if I was
already standing on only one leg. I once heard, or read somewhere that a man
can easily live for a week without food, but for me, in my conditions, one more
day and night would be enough, I could vouch for that with certainty. In my
conditions not a single revolutionary from the past would have declared a hunger
strike (Id read about them once )
29 December, Wednesday A man can turn into almost anything and it seems
to me that Im not the Vasily Maksimovich Baranov I was a long time ago, but just
a Russian pig with the number 25795. I have OST, for Ostarbeiter, on my chest,
a workers number on my cap and my own number in my pocket, although they
make us wear it round our neck. Numbered all over. They say that OST means
Oaf from Soviet Territory, but a newer version would be Observe caution
Soviet Trash. Well show them yet who we really are. This evening there was an
air-raid siren, we wanted to run to the railway bridge, but we got lost and sat under
an oak tree with shrapnel from the anti-aircraft guns plumping into it
 304

1944
3 January, Monday. Air-raid alerts every day, but they dont bomb the city,
although other cities get a good hiding. Someone brought a leaflet that the
Americans had dropped for the German workers. Everyones very pleased that
there are alerts so often. The weathers weepy and theres a strong wind. Damp
and chilly. I sold my jersey from home, and I was sad to part with it, it served me
for everything and rescued me in the cold and in bed. But Id rather suffer cold
than hunger. I took 8 marks for it, i.e. 400 g of bread. Only its not good bread,
but our camp bread. Im working on the night shift again for the same vicious
beast of a foreman. Last night they gave soup to those who had a coupon, usually
the Germans, French and Belgians, they gave the Italians extra, but didnt give
the Russians any and the cook drove us out of the canteen. Just before morning I
went to the toilet, slipped into the Germans stall and decided to take a snooze.
Suddenly I felt cold water on me and took fright, it turned out that the cook was
checking on the Russian and Italian idlers and driving them out with water. When
I came out he hit me twice on the cheek. If Id had anything in my hands, Ive
have given him as good as I got, but I was a mosquito compared to him
7 January, Friday I decided not to go to work today. I was desperately hungry
and I went to the rubbish pit and collected lots of turnip peel and trimmings, but
a polizei spotted me and tried to catch me, because were not allowed to climb
into the rubbish pit. I ran off and went back to my room, the lads asked for some
trimmings and I gave them some, and I told Grisha there were lots of them in
the pit, only watch out for the polizei. He went running off and didnt notice
the polizei, who was already watching the toilet, and the moment Grisha started
collecting trimmings, the polizei hit him from behind with his rifle butt and killed
him. I just couldnt get over it all day long, after all it was because of me that hed
been killed, if I hadnt gone he would never have known. In the evening, when
the commandant came into the room, we protested that we were being treated
worse than cattle. He muttered something, the idiot. That evening they took the
body away somewhere. I cried so hard that blue veins came out all over my body.
If the victory comes soon and Im still alive, what happened today will be a reason
for taking even fiercer vengeance against these Fascist monsters. Eternal hatred
to them. no one can ever beat this incident out of my head, as long as it is still in
one piece
12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Its hard to describe what has happened to me during
this time. The fact is that I was involved in sabotage. So I almost paid for that
with my life.
I had to recover in the Kranksbarack. I remember that when I punctured the
air hose with the point of a machine part, someone hit me hard over the head.
 305

The Belgian told me it was thanks to him that they didnt put me on trial, he said
he interceded for me and told them I fell on the hose by accident, although the
Fascist knew perfectly well that it wasnt an accident. The Belgian pointed out
to me that if I didnt change my attitude to work, they would shoot me. They
have already spoken about it and moved me to the paint shop for a final check.
Its really foul working here, especially because the paints are so toxic that they
completely poison a body thats already weak. Obviously Im just living out the
final part of my life here. The potatoes left by the lads were taken, so each of them
helps me however he can. Even Butromenko gave me 100 g of bread. But all this
hasnt done much to help me recover my health. The noise in my head hasnt
gone away, my wound is festering, my hair hasnt been trimmed and it sticks to
my skin. The bruises under my eyes are not going away. Today, 17 January, I was
walking past my old Fascist foreman, he started trembling in rage, and obviously
out of fear, I very nearly grabbed hold of him, but I thought better of it and moved
away, he obviously understood too and made a quick dash to one side. My new
foreman is constantly reproaching me with being careless, today he sent me off
twice to wash my hands, saying my hands were making the parts dirty, and he
called me a partisan and a communist too
19 January 1944. Today instead of soup they gave us steamed potatoes with
oysters. The oysters were heavily salted, so some lads didnt finish them: Partisan
and Grandad gave me theirs. But the tiredness and weakness are still there. Ive
got nothing healthy in my stomach, Im terribly thirsty and my heads full of
drowsy mist. My legs simply refuse to move and they ache very badly. Theres no
news at all from the front. Im basically cut off from the Russians, and the Italians
dont get involved in politics. All this only makes me even more dejected. They
brought a trolley into the dangerous prisoners workshop and I had a talk with a
young guy from Leningrad , he asked me to get him the papers of any foreigner
and asked how he could find me in case he turned out to be on my side. We made
an arrangement. Since then I cant get the impression of that meeting with the
dangerous prisoner out of my mind. Work ends at 7 oclock in the morning
21 January 1944, Friday. Today there were three of us working, since one of
the wops wasnt here. The foreman made inquiries, but he was told the man had
been arrested. Apparently because he was visiting a German woman, the German
neighbours supposedly found out about it, and so now the Italian will be hanged.
The Italians basically live in the same situation as the Russians, only their own
Red Cross and the Americans help them. But we Russians are like outcasts, no
one needs us, although there are millions of us here. There are more Russians in
Germany than any other nationality. Our camp is supposedly a punishment camp,
with 3,000 Russians, whereas the other 200 men are Belgians and Frenchmen. We
30 6

are fenced in by a hundred rows of barbed wire, and they walk about without any
escorts. But dozens of Russians die every day, and all from starvation.
Russians are a resilient people. No one will deny that. But to bear this kind
of punishment, you have to have something to eat. We cant collect potatoes,
theyve taken away the root-vegetable clamps and theyve increased the watch.
Yesterday and today there was absolutely nothing to eat. Theres no news from
the front.
 308

My father, Georgy Ivanovich Veyde, was from old Swedish stock. It seems his forebears
had served in the Russian army since the time of Peter the Great. Family tradition has
it that our Veyde ancestor was a vice-admiral at the beginning of the eighteenth century
and trained Peters sailors. My father was a barber. My mother, Yelizaveta Fyodorovna
Fogelzang, was a manicurist and worked alongside Father in the same hairdressers.
Yelizaveta Georgievna dictated these lines to the St Petersburg journalist and research
worker Sergey Glezerov at the beginning of the present century, and he published her diary
for the first time in Eyewitness Accounts of the Siege. The 14-year-old Liza began making
notes after being evacuated from Leningrad to the Caucasus and continued when she was
deported to Germany. The last lines were penned just before liberation and her return home.
Of course Veyde was not at first allowed back to Leningrad, being politically unreliable.
Liza and her mother spent five years felling trees at a fur and forestry base. After they had
returned to the city in 1949 Liza joined the Autotrans cooperative, and later worked as a
controller and norm regulator at the Glavleningradstroy construction centre.
Yelizaveta Georgievna lived alone, practically in poverty, in a small one-room apartment
of a Khrushchev block, Sergey Glezerov recounts. Her last job was as a cleaner in a
public toilet. She cried when she told me that because the job was so humiliating. But she
had no means of support, she had to scrimp and save. And yet she was very soft-hearted and
sensitive. In her tiny apartment she housed two Gastarbeiter from the market, husband and
wife. They were homeless as she had once been, and she had pity on them and took them
in. About her diary she said, When I die I want my diary to be donated to the Leningrad
Blockade Museum. It is my most precious possession and it will keep my memory alive.
When we were preparing this collection Yelizaveta Georgievna was not answering her
phone. The fate of her diary is unknown. It is not in the Blockade Museum.
What we have is the following.
 30 9

It was exactly 11 oclock on the night of 11 September 43 and we were leaving

Mnsterberg. It was a starlit night as we drove out of the courtyard. The road was
deep sand and the horses had difficulty pulling the carts loaded with things. It was
dead quiet all round but we could see that something was burning not too far away.
The front line was about 20 kilometres away. There were six villages on the move.
The first one left first, and so on. We were the third. We waited for everyone by the
windmill the edge of our village. But the weather was changeable and it came on to
rain heavily at midnight. Here you are standing outside peoples houses but you cant
go in. Everything was all right to begin with, but with the approach of morning it got
lighter and lighter and although the rain stopped we were wet through and without
sleep. Luckily the day turned out bright and sunny and we were able to catch up
on our sleep. Now this is the fifth day of our journey and we are about to cross the
Dnieper. Right now I am sitting in the cart making notes. In front of me is the broad
Dnieper. The sun is setting (we are going to spend the night on the road next to the
carts), its reflection is gold on the blue waters of the river. Its noisy all round, just
like a gypsy camp. As far as I can see there are the white sails of boats and the wide
Ukrainian steppe
Evening of 16 September 43. I continue writing but I dont want to repeat my
description of how beautiful the Dnieper is in the morning. We left Borisoslav, a pretty
town on a hill right above the Dnieper. Ill have something to remember when we get
home. Were in a Ukrainian village called Yurevka. The neglected settlement is in a
gulley (more like a hole). A long way from town. They say were going to be staying here
but were not happy with this. Some small mud huts, but lots of fruit and bread. One
day here, then press on. Were homesick and depressed and wherever we go we miss
Papa, hoping he is alive and wishing things were different. Ive shed so many tears in
this short time. But theres nothing I can do about it, its my fate and Im not the only
one whos been left an orphan. There are millions of them. I was 14 or so, but there are
small children too who are complete orphans
26/9/43. We are not going out to work yet. I would like to sleep on a bit but I have
to feed the horses. Its muddy on the road because its been raining, but Im not afraid,
I ride one horse and have the other on a lead rein. If my people could see what has
become of the little Leningrad girl: a real bandit. If only Papa could know his daughter
is alive.
1 October. So we are still not working. The leader has given us another lodging as
this one is about to collapse. Its the feast of the Protective Veil with the Germans and
they are giving us the day off too. But we have nowhere and no time to celebrate. We
cleaned out the barns. After lunch I was so sad I stayed at home but the other girls went
out for a walk. I sat at my desk and remembered different things from the past and this
made me even more miserable
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21 January 1944 has arrived. Lunch. We are going to Zakupnoe station. We get
on the train and the men collect the horses and ride them back. Then were abroad:
farewell, unhappy Russia and our beloved Leningrad! Now we are over the border and
crossing Poland. Now the train is standing at some station called Kachonw, and after
that I dont know any of the stations. They dont allow us to get out and we stand at a
station for half an hour at a time.
Lesnau. We were greeted here with music, speeches and singing. It was 29 January
and we drew into Lesnau station at 11 oclock. Ill never forget it: I was half asleep, and
suddenly there was a bright electric light shining on me and music playing, a march. The
train moved along slowly, all the wagon doors were wide open and we were standing
with the tears running down our suntanned cheeks, weeping. We none of us knew why
we were crying, the tears just came by themselves. From all the sorrow we had been
through, and God knows what lay ahead for us. So here we were greeted with music,
but later things got bad for us. Drawing slowly into the station we heard speeches, songs
and bands, but our hearts were heavy. Hundreds of hands reached out to us, wanting
to know where we were from and how things had been, and telling all sorts of tales
about how wonderful it was here. On we go. Some have got off here but we are being
taken further. At 4 a.m. we arrived at Eichenbrck station. Here too they had waited
till 1 a.m. to welcome us with music, but we arrived too late. We draw into the station
and again hundreds of hands reach out to us. A small station but clean and gleaming in
electric light bright as daylight. They take us to the camp where we are met by nurses in
white gowns. Tables are laid and we sit right down to eat. There is straw bedding, but
very clean and tidy with brand new blankets, two per person. Tired out from our long
journey we lie down on the straw.
We were there just four days, then they took us to another camp, Seegrund. When
we arrived I thought our torment was over, but that wasnt the case. Once again we had
to sit down on the straw, it was cold, the stove was small, it stings our eyes
Today is Sunday, 21 February. Our dinner is ready. We asked if we could go into the
big room: there were women singing hymns, and we listened and all had tears streaming
down our cheeks. The whole hall was weeping silently, we could just see the tears on
every face. We are so far from home, all alone in this foreign land.
The first of March already but we are still in the camp and it will be a whole month
tomorrow. I am sitting on the straw writing these lines. You sit here and you just wonder
what will happen. Happy are you if you have a father. You can live and love him. But we
live and have been in torment for two years
Soon it will be 2 May, two years since we lost Papa and have been alone. Hell
never come to us again and feel sorry for us and say the way he used to, Tatunya, fetch
me some papirosas. No, hes gone. I sit in my room feeling homesick, but Ive got to
get used to it. I want to go and see Emilia today, she is living not far from here, and we
 311

Ribbons, stockings, curly hair she does

not know what awaits her in the future
when her image will be stripped of every
sign of human identity and all that is left
will be fear, pain and sweat. A Russian
slave a little girl with the German name
Weide.

She would survive even this, and she would

get back home to Russia. But never again
would she be as happy as she had been in
childhood and before being driven away to
Germany.
Liza Veyde in a postwar photo, back row, right. From the
book Eyewitness Accounts of the Siege.
 312

found each other quite by chance. Nina set off for school and bumped into Emilias
sister. Lucky chance, and now Im not alone, I have someone to talk to.
Weve been here three months now, but theres nothing new and we dont think
about going home any more. One time I had just got up when I heard people weeping
and men shouting. I went over to the window, and what a scene! Carts loaded down with
things, and people sitting on top. Where were they going? That was what we wanted to
know. We didnt have to wait long. These were poor Poles being taken under guard
to the station. It was a very sad sight and it makes us feel even more sorrowful. Why?
Why? they kept shouting as they went
11/8/44. Moorsand. Its sunny out, nice summer weather, but life here has cast a
dark shadow on my heart. I ache all over and I feel so unhappy. When I am working
in the fields I cant fix anything in my mind. All sorts of rubbish floats into my head.
And its the same every day: this one has been killed, that one injured. I got up the day
before yesterday after being in bed for two weeks. I thought I would never get out of bed
again but with Gods help I managed. But I am so weak I creep about and my head is
spinning. For two weeks I didnt have anything to eat, just a bit of goats milk. I often
thought back to our Leningrad hospitals.
Moorsand. The sun will soon be going down, another uneventful day has gone by
and the years are flying past without any change for the better. Summer will soon be
past and there is no end to the war in sight. Its impossible to see ahead. Our life here
is such that we are glad just to get through a day at a time. We have no newspapers, no
radio, we dont know anything. Boredom and gloom all around us. Sometimes on a
day off I sit in the garden by myself and remember how it used to be. Its hard living in
a foreign land
1/11/44. After reading books I used sometimes to ask my parents what life in the
outside world was like. Well now I have experienced it for myself. I weep bitterly when I
look at my photograph of Papa. What a life it has been this year, and who can tell what
the future holds.
Song
O my life
Unhappy life
Like a stone
You weigh upon my heart
But there are no words
I just weep my unhappiness
Into my pillow.
But it doesnt help
No it doesnt help
I need to go, to go. The end.
 313

In January 1942 the Fascist leadership ordered the transportation of 15 million workers from the German-
occupied territories of the USSR to forced-labour camps. The result was that about 5 million people were taken,
of which 2.4 million were from the Ukraine and more than 400,000 from Belorussia.
TASS.
 314

I composed that poem while working with the peasants looking after the cows. It
was summer 1944. September. And on my birthday I was lying in bed ill
18/2/45, Sunday. A whole week has flown by since we came here. Poeple are saying
the Russians are getting closer and closer and were beginning to get our hopes up about
going home soon. Weve been in this big castle a week now lying on the floor like pigs
in a sty. Just like the camp a year ago. But the difference is that we are no longer feeding
the lice and we are able to make tea. When you go outside you can hear the gunfire
getting ever closer. We dont anticipate any good from this. Every day we expect some
new assault. Well see what happens
 316

Boris Aleksandrovich Andreev made his youthful notes with the stump of an indelible
pencil in the German coal mine to which he had been deported from the Pskov village where
he used to spend his holidays. He kept the notes in a special box with a secret lock, together
with such German trophies as a pair of binoculars, a compass and a torch. His son Yury
recalls that sometimes his father, a Leningrader from Vasilevsky Island, the rest of whose
family survived the blockade, was happy to let him play with the trophies, but strictly forbade
him to read the diary.
7/5/43. Today one of our (Leningrad) party died No. 432. The deaths of friends
(mere numbers in the German account books), the escapes, some cheap stamps received in
exchange for slave labour, humiliating treatment by overseers he writes about these things
in a detached way. It is as if he is compiling a report rather than writing about himself. He
is afraid to accept that these things are actually happening to him, afraid to come to terms
with his own fate
My father never once told me what he had gone through as an Ostarbeiter and later,
after liberation, as a woodcutter in the Urals where he had been sent, this time by the Soviet
authorities. The memories were too painful for him. The notebook was mouldy but Boris
Aleksandrovich made a fair copy after the war which his son read only after his death in
2000.
Once Borya Andreev had been allowed back to Leningrad on leave he never returned to
the forestry base. Through the string-pulling of his aunt who had been in the city throughout
the siege he obtained permission to stay. He entered a school for young workers, then went to
an electromechanical technical college, after which he spent his working life as an engineer
and designer in the Leningrad post box. The diary first saw the light of day in 2006 in
a book by P. Polyan and N. Pobol after his son granted permission for publication to the
Russia Weekly Argumenty i fakty. The memories of these terrible events, he told us, are
beginning to fade, and peoples attitudes towards them are tending to become he chose
his words with care almost offhand. But what is in these pages ought to be known, not just
by the relatives of those who bore the burden of war but by everyone.
 317

27/4/42. There are nine of us who have to go to Germany five lads: Nikolay
Timofeev, Nikolay Semyonov, Ivan Paromonov, Sergey Yastrebov and me, plus
four girls: Nyura and Nina Murkina, Lena Kilk and Vera Timofeeva (Nikolays
sister).
We set out at 9 a.m. We put our things on the cart. The photographer who had
showed up in our village at the beginning of the war took photos of us together
with those who were seeing us off, basically the whole village. We reached Plyussa
around 4 p.m. The Germans checked us and ordered us to go to the railway wagons.
They sent the lads and girls to separate wagons. They were goods wagons with 30
35 people in each. We spread out the straw and settled down. But the train didnt
move. So we spent the night in the wagons and those who were seeing us off slept
in the station somewhere
30/4/42. Still travelling. At one stop they were selling eggs at 20 roubles for ten
so I bought five. The train stopped in the evening and we were taken to a bathhouse
that night and had our clothes disinfected. From the bathhouse we were taken to
some barracks.
1/5/42. In the morning they gave us soup and coffee. Then our Soviet money
was exchanged for German. They took us to a bathhouse again in the evening. They
gave us soup and put us back on the train. Passenger carriages now. We reached the
German frontier in the night
5/5/42. After spending the night in the train we were taken to the bathhouse.
Ten people at a time. They made us wash very thoroughly. First the women, then us.
In the afternoon they gave us soup, bread and sausage. Then they lined us up
and entered numbers for each of us on recruitment lists. I and the rest of the lads
from our village were given the number 1 and told that was the number that would
be used when we were taken to work on the farm
8/5/42. Thin soup in the morning. Very hungry. The rusks from home ran out
long ago. After dinner of thin soup and some bread they took us to the train. At one
station we were told that everyone wearing a red tag had to get out. There were 41
of us with red tags, and we were transferred to a different train.
After about 20 km we were taken off the train to a camp. We found out from
some Ukrainians who had been brought here about three months ago that they are
working in a coal mine. We told the interpreter that we had been brought here by
mistake, we had been told that the red tags meant we were supposed to be working
on a farm. But the interpreter said they always tell people that and then they take
them to the mines or factories, and it was not a mistake that we were brought here.
The Ukrainians told us the food was bad here. In the morning tea, 300 g of
bread, 15 g butter, 15 g sausage. For dinner thin soup and 75 g bread. In the evening
they gave us thin soup and 75 g of bread.
 318

The camp is surrounded by tall posts strung with barbed wire

10/5/42. They got us up at about 7 a.m. After breakfast we fell in and were counted.
We were put on a lorry and brought to the mine. We were each given a miners lamp
with a battery and lowered in the lift, several men at a time, down the shaft. On our
way to the lift they kept stopping to count us to make sure no one ran away.
After going down about 300 metres (someone said) we travelled along about 3
km on trucks. Finally we arrived at the place. We crawled up a long, low, narrow
sloping tunnel to reach the coalface. Then we were allocated to Germans, one
Russian to one German.
Our job consisted of shovelling the coal onto a conveyer belt as the German
loosened it with a mechanical hammer
11/5/42. They got us up at 3 a.m. From today the bread ration is increased. 500
g bread, 30 g butter, 30 g sausage. For dinner thin soup and in the evening 100 g
bread and thin soup. This is also the place where we are working.
Our camp is not far from Saarbrcken. We are working in the Gotelborn and
Victoria mines
31/5/42, Sunday. The sick were told to collect up their things. At 11 oclock 27
people, sick and elderly, were taken out of the camp, to be sent home as we were
told
16/6/42. Today I was working with a different German. He turned out to be
really unpleasant, yelling at me and forcing me to carry all the tools, his and mine.
19/6/42. Im working with the same German. I dont know how to get away
from him. Today I decided to go to the doctor about my eyesight, hoping he would
transfer me to surface work, but he said they didnt have an eye doctor and kept
me down the mine
18/7/42. I was given a good whipping today. When I got back from the mine
last night I lay down on my bed before supper and fell asleep by mistake. At that
moment a German policeman came into the room and woke me up with his whip
21/8/42. One man died yesterday. He was a surface worker. He was supposed
to fill 50 truckloads of coal but he was too weak to work. The Germans started to
hit him, then he was carried back here to the camp where he died.
Five people escaped today.
July pay packets were handed out. I got 26 marks.
In the evening I managed to wangle a second helping of soup
2/9/42. When we got back from the mine last night some American planes
came over. We were got out of bed and taken to the air-raid shelter. There were
about 700 people, and after a while it got very stuffy and hard to breathe. Some
people collapsed. The raid went on for 22 hours, then they let us go back to the
barracks
 319

The time spent on forced labour in Germany was for Borya perhaps the
most dramatic period of his life. He only told his diary and never once
uttered a word about it to his family and friends.
Photo from the personal archive of P. Polyan.
 320

30/9/42. A German at work gave me a hunk of bread and two pears. I showed
him photos of my mother, father and sister
25/10/42, Sunday. Today they handed out pre-printed letters with requests
for winter clothing which we had to send to our families. Letters from our families
were given out. I wrote Aunt Polya a letter
12/12/42. A few days ago a Ukrainian got a letter from a friend who had escaped
from his camp. He wrote that he had got home safely and was living at home. He
walked for four days, then got on a train and travelled right to his own station. The
man who got the letter ran away two days later but was caught straightaway
23/12/42. One lad died in the sick bay today, someone from our Leningrad
group
30/1/43. In the mine today a German told me at Stalingrad a huge number of
Germans have been surrounded. Our planes are bombing them mercilessly. Basically
the Germans are on the retreat on all fronts. Hitler spoke on the radio today.
2/2/43. Today at dinner everyone refused their soup. The camp commandant
asked through an interpreter why we werent eating. We said the soup like that isnt
even given to pigs, and youre giving it to humans. The commandant said that in
two or three days there would be potatoes.
One lad broke his leg in the mine.
3/2/43. There were dishes for dinner today: boiled turnips, some sort of boiled
grass and a watery sauce, all served up separately. Nobody ate it. Then the police
started to walk between the rows of tables using their whips to make us eat those
dishes
19/2/43. The Germans are still retreating. Our army has retaken a large amount
of territory: Rostov, Oryol, Kharkov, Voronezh and now they are approaching
Kiev. The Germans have suffered heavy losses at Stalingrad. Hitler and his cronies
are calling on their workers to redouble their efforts so as to help the army. They
want them to work 10, 15, 18 hours a day. Theyve removed the radio from the
camps police office
3/3/43. I got a postcard from home (the village) today. They write that life
goes on as usual. They havent heard any news of the girls who came with us to
Germany and who we parted with at Metz. They are asking me to try to seek them
out, but how am I supposed to do that?
19/3/43. Five people ran away from the camp.
22/3/43. Four of them came back of their own accord
4/7/43. We weighed ourselves. I weigh 56 kg (my height is 175 cm)
6/8/43. Got a parcel from Aunt Polya: rusks, letters
10/8/43. A second parcel from Aunt Polya. It contained trousers, cap, woollen
socks, gloves
 321

25/10/43. I am working on the conveyer belt, separating the coal from the
rock. I gave the German who works with me 10 cigarettes. He gave me 200 g of
bread. 150 new people have arrived.
30/10/43. One of the new men hanged himself in the lavatory
23/1/44. No work. Again no disinfection, and we are crawling with lice. Got a
letter from our girls. They say theyre doing fine
10/2/44. Today the Germans killed a Russian with pick axes in the mine
because he was too weak to handle the shovel
The Russian mine workers at the Gotelborn pit were called to a meeting and
told that anyone working idly or displaying insubordination would be sent to the
punishment unit. Several people have been there already. Its in a separate barrack
at the camp. The work is on a hard regime and after work they are forced to clean
the buildings, wash the floors etc. They dont let them rest.
Two new Polizei have been appointed to our barrack. Its very strict in the
other barracks too. If you dont make your bed neatly enough you get sent to the
punishment unit for 8 days.
They are still making the soup out of dried cabbage leaves
23/4/44. Sunday. We worked. Spring is coming. I long for freedom. People
escape from the camp nearly every day. One elderly peasant from our room ran
away. He was caught and spent the night in solitary. Next day he ran away again
7/6/44. Today they announced that no one is allowed to go outside the camp.
There are rumours of a British landing in Germany
6/9/44. They got us up at 2 a.m. We were told to collect our things, then we
were given bread and driven to the station. At 10 oclock they loaded us onto a
train and we set off. We were taken off the train at 5 p.m. and led away on foot.
200 men were separated off and put into a camp that was right there, the rest of us
were taken further. Finally they brought us to a camp. There was nobody there. It
took another two hours to get the stoves heated and a meal prepared. We werent
fed until 11 p.m.
11/9/44. Reveille at 5 a.m. They gave out bread and took us to the station. We
were brought to the town of Forbach. They took us to a camp guarded by a double
barbed wire fence. There are Poles living here. They used to be working on the land
for Bauer (farmers) but now theyre here digging trenches.
There arent enough beds for all of us. We sleep on the floor. We are all covered
with lice. The wooden beds are full of bedbugs, its impossible to sleep
2/12/44. We were given a loaf of bread each and led in a column along the
road in the Zweibrcken direction. We walked all day and all night. My feet got
badly rubbed, I fell behind the column and settled down for the night in the porch
of a house. The next morning I continued on alone. It was another 12 km to
 322

Zweibrcken. I called in at one house, begged some matches and then cooked up
some potatoes in the forest. Two km short of Zweibrcken I stopped for the night
8/12/44. I arrived in Pirmasentz where I met two other lads who had got
detached from the column. We walked to a small village (Ktrischhof) where there
are Russians working on trenches, and stayed there.
18/12/44. We have been transferred from Ktrischhof to Petersberg. We are
working on trenches again. We sleep on the floor in one room. The lice are eating
us alive. There are so many lice that when I took off my vest and went outside to
shake it out the snow turned grey
19/3/45. At 5 a.m. they got us up and took us further. When it got light English
planes started flying overhead. They continued to lead us in a column. The metal
road surface is pockmarked by bullets. We saw a man squatting in a roadside ditch
with a rucksack on his back but no head. Clearly an explosive bullet from a plane
had hit him in the head. We continued on. Our route led through forest. I was
walking at the head of the column. Suddenly I heard a machine gun chattering
behind me. Everyone ran to the side and into the forest. I hopped over the ditch, ran
into some shrubbery and lay down. The planes were diving one after the other and
firing their machine guns. I lay there expecting to die at any moment. The bullets
were making the dry leaves smoke. At last the planes flew away and everything
went quiet. The escort whistled and we began to form up. Several people had been
killed and some were injured.
Four of us from the same coal mine decided not to go with the column and
stayed behind in the forest. The planes continued to fly around until evening.
When it got dark and the planes had gone we set off again. We walked all night.
When it got light two of us, me and a lad called Vasya, went back into the forest and
slept all day. But the planes gave us no rest. A bomb exploded about 100 metres
from where we were. We hid under a boulder so the shrapnel didnt hit us, I just got
hit on the leg by a small stone
23/3/45. This morning a woman at a house fed us: coffee, bread and jam. In
the evening we walked to another village
30/3/45. We went to the village in the morning. We bought some bread without
using ration cards in a shop and then went back to our basement. Heavy artillery
fire. An American helicopter landed near our camp. Me and Vaska and a group
of Frenchmen went over to welcome the Americans. But the pilot wouldnt let
us near. First they hid behind the helicopter and aimed their weapons at us. One
Frenchman took out his handkerchief and started to wave it. Then the airmen
waved for us to go away. We left. In the evening American tanks arrived.
31/3/45. Tanks, armoured cars and lorry loads of American soldiers are moving
down the road
 323

Many of the Ostarbeiter (as the Germans called workers from the East) failed to return home. The instructions
from above were that All workers are to be afforded sufficient food, accommodation and treatment to permit
maximum exploitation at minimal cost. Thousands perished. The photo shows soviet workers captured by
Nazis return their homes.
TASS.
 324

3/4/45. We decided to make our way back across the Rhine but we were
detained on the way by an American patrol and driven to the Russian camp at
Mannheim. Here the lads dont work. They wander around the ruined houses
picking up bits of clothing and food. We are waiting to be sent home
5/5/45. There are rumours that the war is over
11/5/45. A Russian woman at a neighbouring camp was shot today. Under the
Germans she worked for the Gestapo interrogating Russians and beating them up.
She was tried and shot by Russians
5/6/45. Today they told us we would be going to an assembly point.
Mannheim. We collected our things and walked to a school from where they
drove us to Mannheim-Kafertiel camp.
7/6/45. There was a concert and an American film. They announced that we
would be going home tomorrow
10/6/45. One lad went missing from our wagon during the night. Next morning
they said he had been removed because he had been serving in the German army
and executing partisans. The train stopped at Grimm. We were taken in lorries to
a bridge over the Elbe. We walked across the bridge and were greeted by Russians
on the other side.
Here I parted with my friend Vaska (Kuvatov, a Bashkir it seems) with whom
I had spent almost six months. We separated because it turned out he was a POW
and POWs were being separated out from us1.
From there we were taken to the town of Riza, and from there we had to walk
to a camp 6 km outside the town. At the camp we were registered, divided up into
groups of 100 and sent to barracks for the night
29/6/45. Got up at 5 a.m. Walked 6 km, then had breakfast and a rest. At 4
oclock the captain informed us that Comrade Stalin had been made Hero of the
Soviet Union and awarded the Order of Lenin and Gold Star medal. Also the title
Generalissimus and the Order of Victory.
After political instruction we continued our walk until 9 in the evening
21/7/45. We set off at 4 a.m. and walked until 11, covering 30 km. As we passed
through villages the women and old men welcomed us, and some of them were
crying. At 1800 hours we had a rest and then walked another 7 km, stopping at the
USSR national border where we spent the night
2/9/45. Sunday. We relaxed until dinner. After dinner we were formed into a
battalion in case of an emergency. We washed in the bathhouse. After that letters
were given out. I got two letters, from home and from Aunt Polya. Mother writes
that they are alive and well. Aunt Polya writes that the village has been burnt to the

1
The filtration (political checking) of civilians was carried out by the NKVD, but that of POWs by military
counterintelligence, i.e. SMERSH.
 325

ground and Nikolay Semyonov came home. He was at home for a while, then was
taken into the army
21/11/45. Men from the Special Division have come to our section. We are all
going to be interrogated
28/11/45. The Special Division has come and gone. They took down all the
details from when we left Leningrad to when we were liberated by the Americans.
I signed about seven different documents and made prints with my right index
finger
23/8/46. Went down to Chermoz to get a suit. Tomorrow I leave for home
Leningrad.
Face to Face
with the enemy:
The FronT and
occupaTion
 328

The Victory of the Fallen, the Joy of the Condemned

Figures show that almost 14 million ordinary Soviet citizens died as a result of the
German occupation during the Second World War. More than a million of those who died
were children: 1,005,285, to be precise. These are just numbers. However, the reality that lies
behind these numbers can open up such depths of rage and despair that one can understand
Ilya Ehrenburgs exhortation to Soviet soldiers, in an article of 1942, to Kill the German. 1
The word hell does not even begin to describe what went on in German-occupied
territories. Here, innocent people, above all children, were subjected to unspeakable torture.
No sooner had the German army taken Lvov, for instance, than they embarked on a horrific
massacre. Thousands of people were killed, most of them women and children. The following
day, the bodies of the dead were displayed in the windows of an arcade in the city: pregnant
women whose bellies had been cut open with dirty knives; nearby, mutilated unborn babies;
the body of a woman with her breasts cut off and a five-pointed star cut into her forehead with
a knife. A three-year-old child had been pinned to the womans stomach with a bayonet: a
mother and son killed by a single blow.
Recently, we have heard treacherous assertions that the Germans had no choice but to
massacre the peaceful civilian population in the Soviet Union, as the latter were helping the
partisans. This is a despicable lie. These considerate Germans would initiate brutalities
as soon as they had taken a town or village. For instance, the Fascists occupied the town of
Volovo, the regional centre of the Kursk Region, for only four hours before being driven out by
the Red Army. However, in the space of those few hours, dozens of children were killed.
In some villages and towns that were occupied by the Germans for only a few days before
being liberated, more than 2,000 children were killed or maimed. One such victim was
14-year-old Vanya Gromov, from the village of Novinki. Fascist soldiers strapped him to a
chair and sawed off his right arm with a hacksaw, for their own entertainment. 12-year-old
Vanya Kryukov from the village of Kryukovo had both his hands chopped off and was then
driven under volleys of machine-gun fire towards the Soviet positions. Children were crucified
on gates and then hung upside down, and young girls were subjected to brutal gang rape.
After this, even the youngest children in the country did not think twice about taking
revenge. Those who went to school during the Soviet years will still remember the names of some
of the Pioneers who became popular heroes: Valya Kotik, Zina Portnova, Lyona Golikov2.
During the war years, medals and orders were awarded to more than 35,000 Pioneers who
helped to defend their country.
1
The Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote a newspaper article entitled Kill on 24 July 1942 at the time of the German
assault on the Don, apparently prompted by discovery of letters held by dead German soldiers which made it clear that
the Germans intended to enslave the Soviet population. The article uses the line Kill the German which was later used
in much Soviet propaganda.
2
Valentin Kotik (19301944) Zinaida Portnova (19261944) and Leonid Golikov (1926-1943) were all young pioneers
who died while taking part in partisan activity and were some of the youngest people to be awarded the honour of Hero
of the Soviet Union for their bravery.
 330

In the German-occupied town of Kremenets in west Ukraine, Roma Kravchenko-

Berezhnoy wrote a diary which he hid in the attic and even from his own parents. In this
diary Roma recorded news reports from the front (which he listened to on a radio set which
had survived the occupation) and kept a day-to-day account of the killings that were taking
place around him a Jewish ghetto was being created in the town. Even as young as fifteen,
Roma sensed the historical importance of what was going on, and wished to record every
event as it happened. He never intended to write about his own personal life in his diary, and
yet so great was the impact of the war on all areas of life that he had no choice. Roma had a
friend from school called Frida, a Jewish girl. Her name crops up in just a few diary entries
and then disappears altogether, just as Frida herself, Romas first love, disappeared from
the face of the earth. But he would never forget her
Roman Kravchenko-Berezhnoys diary comes to an end a few months before the
liberation of Kremenets. Roma left to fight with the Red Army. Thinking there was a good
chance he might be killed, he told his family where his diary was hidden. Romas father, a
former officer in the Imperial Army, found the notebook in the attic. After looking through it,
he handed it over to the Extraordinary State Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating
Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Fascist Invaders. In 1946, the diary was sent back
to Romas parents with the following accompanying note: The delay in returning this
document to you was brought about by circumstances connected with the Nuremburg Trial.
We now return your sons diary to you with thanks. Secretary-General for the Extraordinary
State Commission (P. Bogoyavlensky). At this point, Roman Kravchenko-Berezhnoy was
working in Germany as a translator, and was sent on an assignment to the Sachsenhausen
concentration camp, where he recorded the testimonies of former prisoners and recorded
material evidence of Nazi war crimes: tallow lamps made of human fat and neatly filled
sacks of flour milled from human bones.
After his return to the Soviet Union, Roman Aleksandrovich graduated with distinction
from the physics department of the University of Lvov. He worked for thirty-three years as
head of a research laboratory investigating the physical properties of minerals at the Kola
branch of the Academy of Sciences.
For fifty years, until his death in 2011, Roman Aleksandrovich lived with his wife
Lyudmila, who helped him adapt his diary entries when he decided to use them as the basis
for a book entitled Between White and Red: Freeze Frames of My Twentieth Century.
 331

11 July 1941. I am troubled by all sorts of thoughts. I often lie in bed unable to get
to sleep, just thinking. It seems I am fortunate or unfortunate enough to live at
a time when events do not merely take place, but assail us, one succeeding the other
with lightning speed. It is as if we are living through the Napoleonic era, but on a
much larger scale
12 July 1941. Over the last two days, the Red Army has been holding off an attack
by the German Army. There has been a bitter struggle. Our troops held up the southern
part of the front, the part that includes Kremenets, for some time. It looks as if our
commander knew what he was doing. They fought back the Germans several times.
Those were good times! But then our troops became surrounded from the north, and
were forced to retreat. On the night of the 1st to the 2nd of July, some of the last units
retreated, blowing up the road behind them. However, the last of the units had to
fill in the trench left by the explosion in order to get through, so the demolition did
nothing to hinder the Germans. On 1 July we said farewell to Soviet power.
Ill write more tomorrow. Now Ill write a bit about what I saw today. I went into
town this morning. On the way, I saw that an arch had been put up announcing ES
LEBE DIE UNBESIEGBARE DEUTSCHE ARMEE! (Long live the Invincible
German Army!). A similar arch was put up to greet the Bolsheviks, perhaps by the
same energetic welcomers1. There are proclamations calling on people to help the
Fhrer in his fight against the Moscow invasion. We are hearing on the grapevine
that Kiev has been taken, but I dont actually believe it. Time will tell. All the radio
sets in town have been requisitioned, so its impossible to find out any news except
market gossip.
Yesterday evening Soviet prisoners of war were being driven through town. They
were being treated worse than cattle, beaten with sticks in front of all the people.
Thats German culture for you die Kultur!
I think that's all. P.S. Ill have to hide this diary in a safe place. Now anyone
writing down such free opinions is in danger even of being shot. Ill hide it under
a heavy box that Ill have to lift up each time I take it out. Anyone who finds my
diary and reads these lines will find out where Ive been hiding it. A philosophical
conundrum!
13 July 1941. This morning I went into town. I called in on F and together we
went to the Lembergs. Everything in their house is still in confusion after the recent
pogroms2. F came with me to see them. She took them a few roses, but didnt stay as
things are in confusion at her place, too, and her parents dont want her to go out of
1
Kremenets changed hands several times around the time of the revolution in fighting between Bolsheviks and other
forces, and was briefly part of the Ukrainian Peoples republic in 191819. In 1920 it became part of Poland. In 1939
when the Soviet Union and Germany had signed a non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union had annexed the town. This
is more likely a reference to the recent Soviet annexation than the October Revolution.
2
In early July 1941 Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis carried out a pogrom against the Jews in Kremenetz, killing 800
men, women and children.
 332

the house. She has come to see me illegally. My comrades were making fun of me
for walking down the street with a Jewish girl. Now Im really beginning to find out
which of my friends are true comrades, and which are comrades only in name. Let
them laugh: all it does is show them up for what they are. Theres a good saying: He
laughs best, who laughs last. Recently, I had the following conversation:
Well, I guess thats put paid to your little crush!
No.
No? (disappointed). So what, are you still going to go out with her?
Of course. Why shouldnt I go out with her?
Ah!
And my comrade went off without saying goodbye

17 July 1941. In the morning I went to see F. An order has been put up in town
that all Jews are to wear a white band on their sleeves with a Star of David. They are
becoming Germanys slaves. Poor F. What will happen to her?
Im sick at heart. I feel it every moment. What will happen now? The nationalists
are behaving despicably, like absolute swine. I was standing in a bread queue. The
police1 (Im ashamed to call them by that name, those gangsters, with knives sticking
out of their jackets) were quite shamelessly making free with their fists. Watching, you
feel such hatred that you could string them up with your own hands. These are terrible
days. Will we survive? And what must it be like for the Jews, for F? She says she hopes
they kill her
18 July. I was in town and saw F. She was standing in a bread queue. She's been
looking terrible recently. The sleepless nights are taking their toll; nights spent
worrying that at any minute the nationalists and Germans will come bursting in and
start wreaking havoc. There have been cases when theyve forced their way into
houses at night and demanded girls
1315 July. On the 23rd all educated Jewish men were summoned to the Gestapo
and detained. Now some of them have been let go, others have been shot. All in all,
about 600 people have already been arrested in Kremenets Another thing. The
head of the Ukrainian Government the notorious Bandera, the murderer, has been
arrested for issuing a manifesto in which Hitlers name was written below his own,
Banderas Theres free Ukraine (vilna Ukraina) for you2.
2 August. Yesterday an issue of a new newspaper appeared. Its called
Kremianetsky visnik3 the Kremenets Newsletter, though it actually contained

1
The police would at this point have been the Orpo or Ordnungspolitzei the Nazi police force. Later that month
(July 1941) Himmler set up the Schutzmannschaft, an auxiliary police force under German occupiers in the Eastern
European occupied territories, manned by local collaborators.
2
Stepan Bandera, (1909 -1959) a prominent figure in the Ukrainian nationalist movement, member of the extreme
nationalist Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUP).
3
The title of the paper is in Ukrainian.
 333

In this photo Roma Kravchenko is

nine years old. On his hat he wears
his fathers precious Ribbon of St
George.

And in this photo he is sixteen years

old. An unbridgeable gulf separates
the two pictures. His town has been
occupied by the Fascist army and his
beloved girlfriend has been shut up in
the ghetto, from where she was taken
off to be shot. Before his eyes
Photos from Between White and Red: Freeze
Frames of My Twentieth Century.
 334

no news about Kremenets to speak of. Basically, you could guess the contents of the
paper without even opening it. The whole thing is full of descriptions of Bolshevik
massacres (mordi)1 and praise for Hitler and company. Not a word from the front.
That isnt surprising: they cant write anything about retreats or failure. As I write this,
I can hear the sound of artillery fire in the distance.
Mordi are the executions that took place in the first days of the war. When Father
and Rostislav were taken away
All day I sit at home reading Mark Twain. Some of his satirical stories are very good.
I read for so long that my eyes are sore.
3 August. There seems to be fighting in the Shumsk region at the moment. I can
hear firing coming from that direction. Several peasants wounded by shell blasts have
been brought into the town too. But things are so quiet in town as to suggest otherwise.
The Germans are clearly planning on staying. They are bringing furniture in from bases,
requisitioning the things they need from the locals
I had a good look at an order on the standardisation of food distribution. Food will
be issued to Christians first, and only then to Jews. The order suggests that they will get
enough to eat, but theres a catch: in the event of a food shortage, those in authority
reserve the right to change the amounts. It is clear then that the Jews will miss out, as
they will be last in line. They cant even hope for 300 g of bread a day
46 August. Today, a great event: a report by the German military command has
been published in the second issue of the Kremenets Newsletter. Its dated 2829 July.
The report claims that The Bolsheviks have reached their limit and that they are just
standing waiting for the end to come2. Ill cut out the news bulletins about the front
and paste them in my diary. At some point, well be able to work it all out, but for now
I need to gather material
17 August. No news, which is making me feel desperate again. I got hold of a
newspaper from the 9th But the second article is amusing. The headline is: Stalins
son taken captive3. Its quite clear what the article is about from the headline, there is
no need to translate it
21 August. The biggest story at the moment is a second anti-Jewish measure.
An announcement has been posted in Yiddish and German, as follows: from 20
August, Jews are prohibited from walking on the pavement, due to overcrowding.
The road is good enough for them. And there is more. If a Jew and a German are
walking towards one another, the Jew must go round the German at a distance of 4
metres. In case of one violation of this rule, the Jewish community must pay a fine
of 10,000 roubles. In case of a second violation, all Jews will be forcibly evicted

1
Mordi (Ukrainian) massacre.
2
The quote is in Ukrainian.
3
Stalins son Yakov Dzhugashvili (19071943) was captured by the Germans on 16 July 1941. He was sent to the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he died.
 335

from town. Theres no need to comment on this penalty. Its quite clear enough
as it is.
25 August. Anxious days are upon us. The day before yesterday, 240 paratroopers
landed in Shumsk. A state of emergency has been declared. Fourteen have been caught;
they will be hanged. The others will get up to whatever mischief they can. But that's
not all. Today paratroopers landed nearby, in Smyga, and today two paratroopers were
arrested in Kremenets
Today they issued a new edict against the Jews. They are to surrender all their
valuables: gold and everything. All they are allowed to keep are wedding rings (Im not
even sure if Jewish people wear wedding rings). In general, the Jews of Kremenetsk are
to give up 8 kg of gold to increase Germanys gold reserve.
Another piece of news: weve got a radio set again. They didnt give us our own set
back, of course but a piece of rubbish that doesnt even get a signal from Moscow or
Kiev. Well, thats all for today. What will tomorrow bring?
1 September I managed to pick up Moscow, and listened to a programme for
schoolchildren. Despite the advances of the enemy, the new school year is beginning
as usual in Moscow, everything is going on as usual. I listened to the latest news. Our
army is retreating but the Germans have paid dearly! By 29 August 125 German planes
had been downed, whereas the Bolsheviks had lost twenty-four. The Russian people
are putting up a heroic resistance. Hitler is sending out hundreds of thousands of his
soldiers, but its by no means certain how this war will end. No sir! Im sure that some
day well get our lives back. Because what were experiencing at the moment couldnt
be described as life
4 September. More news about the radio: its going to be taken away again. Today,
an order was posted in town demanding the surrender of all radio sets. Anyone who
doesnt comply will face the death penalty. We have until the 10th. Well, at least
well have the chance to listen for a day or two; then well hand it over. Theres a
second order too, to surrender all weapons and military supplies by the 10th. Anyone
who doesnt comply will face the death penalty. It looks as if the partisans are getting
to the Germans. There are masses of them now in the forests. Theyre armed with
machine guns and hand grenades and keeping the Germans awake at night. The
Germans arent happy. As for me, I have a machine gun and two anti-tank guns in
my cellar! Im going to have to move them away. Also, I have a case from a rifle
cartridge on the end of my pencil. Ill have to bury it; I dont want them to shoot me
for nothing
20 September. The Germans have taken Kiev and Poltava. Announcements have
been posted in town today. They are holding a special service in the cathedral. To hell
with the lot of them. Id kill the lot of them, priests and all, with great pleasure. The
bastards!
 336

29 September On the 17th, new marks of distinction were introduced for Jews:
yellow circles, 10 cm in diameter, to be worn on the chest and back. Its a horrible sight.
What next? How will it all end?
30 September. Today I saw a scene which has now become commonplace. As
trading was taking place at the market, a group of gangsters from the so-called police
swept in. Christians were told to leave and the Jews were seized and searched for butter,
eggs and other banned foods. Those who tried to run away were caught and brutally
beaten. There was a mad dash across Shirokaya Street, jeering and yelling. This is called
an inspection.
7 October Im gradually getting used to school. Ive discovered a pair of former
Russians in my class who now call themselves Ukrainians. When the Soviets were in
charge and all nationalities were treated equally, they were Russians. You need to be
wary of Russian-Ukrainians of that sort; if they find it so easy to change nationality, the
next thing you know theyll be running to the Gestapo
12 October. The day before yesterday I was off sick and went to the cinema; I paid
five roubles for a front row seat. Then I bitterly regretted it. The film was all about the
invincible German army etc. etc. I wont be going to the cinema again, though I do
plan to be off sick more often I got hold of a newspaper. Interesting to see the new
progressive decrees by the Commissioner. The sale of potatoes has been forbidden.
Who would have thought wed live to see such beggary? The second decree orders the
removal of all announcements not issued by the Commissioner from walls, fences,
etc. by the 14th. It is also now forbidden to post any new announcements without the
permission of the Commissioner. That is another slap in the face to our friends the
nationalists.
16 October. Mind you, if you put your trust in winter, and in the boundless spaces
of Russia, things start to look a little different. But well, theres always a but. Lets
imagine the Germans reach the Urals, and the war doesnt end there, or even earlier,
with the occupation of Moscow; well, the Germans wont risk venturing into Siberia
in winter. Maybe what will happen is precisely what the Germans themselves are
planning: Germany takes all the land up to the Urals, and Russia keeps all the land
beyond the Urals. But Japans plan is to have everything up to the Urals. So where does
that leave Russia? All this is assuming that the war will end in victory for Germany. For
the moment, winter is far away, its dry weather, and I want to kill myself. Its a pity I
dont have anything like a revolver.
I just wrote that for some reason, I dont really know why. But if I were to die
knowing that there would be National Socialism in Europe for the next twenty years
or so, I wouldnt be in the slightest bit sorry to part with life.
I've seen German postcards with a map of Europe on which Germany takes up all
the land as far as the Urals; I know the German song Deutschland, Deutschland ber
 337

Alles!; I know that when Hitler intends to do something, he never gives up. I dont
know what our local nationalists should expect from Hitler1. Not a single one of them
has any brains, it seems. They look on Hitler as God. The fools dont realise hes all
talk; they take everything he says in his speeches at face value.
Our friends the Russian nationalists are no better, though. They imagine the future
something like this: the war will end, and the Germans will put some Romanov or other
(from Germany) on the Russian Imperial throne and will then magnanimously bow
out, leaving Russia to her own devices. Then there will be a new cultural renaissance,
religion will flourish and on it will dash, the bold troika2 etc. The idiots
10 November. On my way to school, I met a group of armed men coming towards
me. Four Gestapo agents and behind them, our Haidamaks3. This amazed me. Id
never seen a procession like it before. I sat out my time in school and was on my way
home, with a funeral march playing in my belly 250 g of bread, etc. And there on
Shirokaya Street, there was a whole crowd of Haidamaks. And in front of houses with
stars, not only Haidamaks but a loaded wagon: various possessions, feather bolsters,
pillows, suitcases and all sorts of junk. I didnt understand what was going on.
I got home and was greeted like one who has risen from the dead or rather, my
coat and boots were. It turns out that in the town they are carrying out a purge of
the Jews, to stop them getting too comfortable. The role of the Haidamaks is to act
as henchmen, to watch that German state property (i.e. Jewish property) doesnt go
missing. But theyve been getting carried away and taking peoples boots off them in
the street when they see a good pair. That was why my family were so pleased to see me
safe and unharmed
18 November. One of our friends came yesterday from Kiev. He told us that Kiev
didnt suffer too badly at first, but that it is suffering now. On the fourth day after the
Germans invaded, all the buildings of the Kreshchatyk4 began to explode, one after the
other. Masses of Germans were killed. They took a pipe down to the Dnieper to put out
the fire, as the water supply wasnt working. But somebody nobody knows who cut
the pipe in four places. In retaliation, the Germans killed 170,000 one hundred and
seventy thousand Jews. The explosions and fires are still going on.
Our friend told us that the Germans have already got as far as the minefields around
Moscow. They say Moscow is protected by fortifications the like of which theyve never
seen
He also told us about events in Rovno. Seven thousand Jews were exterminated
there. They were told to gather everything they had that was of any value, then they
1
The Ukrainian nationalists, many of whom were strongly anti-Semitic and anti-Soviet, looked on the Nazis as allies,
at least initially.
2
A line from a famous Russian romance song based on lines from a poem by Fyodor Nikolaevich Glinka (17861880),
The Dream of a Russian Abroad.
3
Ukrainian Cossacks.
4
The main street in Kiev.
 338

were driven out of town, ordered to strip naked, taken away to pits which had been
dug in advance and thrown into them, and then grenades were thrown in after them
and they were machine-gunned. They filled in the pits with earth, and the earth kept
moving for a long time afterwards.
22 November. Now our school has been closed down. The Commissioner gave the
order, the reason being that typhus and other diseases are spreading. Theyre promising
to reopen the school in spring. Well see. But for the moment Im an unemployed
element. The mood is very gloomy in local circles. I can't write any more, its so
damn cold up here in the attic
5 December. The day before yesterday a proclamation by the Area Commissioner
was published, in which he said that he had been forced to issue a harsh but fair
penalty in the Pochaev region, as a result of which eighty people were shot for
Communist activities. Today, huge announcements have been posted in town,
saying roughly: Whoever hands over to the authorities any enemy or wrecker of the
German national economy, or any enemy of Ukraine (though what Ukraine has to
do with it, I have no idea), will be awarded 1,000 roubles in money or in kind. The
name of the informant will be kept strictly secret. The Germans know just how to
communicate with the dirtiest rats among us. The sort that would turn in their father
for a kilo of sugar
22 December. Things have changed. Those given to panic are changing their
German marks into roubles. The Germans are getting hammered again at the front.
Even our useless rag carried a report saying that owing to hard frosts, the military
command had been forced to change battle tactics and in some cases BRING THE
FRONT INTO ALIGNMENT. Rumour has it that Kharkov, Oryol, Kursk and many
other cities have now been taken back, but Im not sure I believe it. There is heavy
fighting outside Sebastopol
12 January 1942. Yesterday new decrees issued by the Imperial Commissioner
Koch1 himself appeared in the paper. Now an eight oclock curfew has been imposed
an hour earlier than before. There are decrees about saboteurs, concealed weapons,
and Soviet prisoners of war ordering people to give them up if they manage to escape.
Since they carried out a requisition of warm clothing, the Germans in Kremenets
are walking about in felt boots: Soviet felt boots. The sight makes my blood boil
21 January. All the streets which were given names like Mazepa, Petliura, Bohun2
etc. after the Germans arrived in town, have, from today, been given German names,
such as Ritterstrasse, etc. I am thoroughly delighted, imagining the mood of our dear
friends the patriots

1
Eric Koch (18961986) Imperial commissioner (Reichskommissar) of Ukraine 19413.
2
Ukrainian folk heroes and nationalists. Ivan Mazepa was a Cossack hetman who betrayed Peter the Great in the war
between Russia and Sweden in the early 18th C. Symon Petliura led the Ukrainian nationalist party in its fight against
the Bolsheviks following the October revolution. Ivan Bohun was a Cossack leader and folk hero.
 339

Id say that about 80 per cent of the population are now in favour of Soviet
power. Its surprising how quickly they change their convictions
31 January. Our High Commissioner has visitors from the Centre. To mark the
occasion he arranged a ball last night. Basically, theres going to be a GHETTO.
Jews have been ordered to vacate ten streets which currently have German residents.
They have to get out before the 14th. Over the next six weeks, a sealed ghetto will
be created in the town. Its horrible even to go outside on the street these days. You
see incredible scenes. People silently leaving all their possessions. Theyve been
allocated the most dirty, densely populated streets. There are ten thousand Jews in
the city. If all of them are packed into these streets, then one thing looks certain:
typhoid. Trading in all sorts of goods has been banned in the city because of typhoid.
But where the hell is this typhoid? It seems to be convenient for the Germans, they
can use it to justify all sorts of things
13 February. Jews are now all required to shave their heads for the ghetto, and
the women have to have their hair cut short like men. Imagine what it must be like
for some Old Testament Rabbi to part with his beard. Today I saw a distressing
scene at the hairdressers: a very refined-looking Jewish woman with a magnificent
thick plait of hair came in. When the hairdresser cut it off, the young woman had
hysterics. And another thing: Jewish girls are rushing to get publicly married. The
Commissioner demanded sixty unmarried girls from the Jewish community for the
German brothel. So far theyve only got twenty, the rest have all got married
22 February. Im writing in bed, at night, I havent been able to find any other
time to do it. Since the 16th, Ive been working at a factory that makes combs. Its
horrible work, and so dusty that I come out looking like a bakers boy. And apart
from that, theres the constant din and squealing of the machines. Still, its all right.
Ill survive
The street that was once Shirokaya Street, then became Mazepa Street and is
now called the Ritterstrasse, is starting to look very odd. One side of it leads into
the ghetto, and there all the streets and lanes are sealed off with fences and all
the windows and doors are boarded up On one side of the street life goes on as
normal, restaurants, drunk policemen raising a racket, and on the other, it is all
boarded up, silent and dead, horrible. And some people are happy with the towns
new appearance. The ghetto is enclosed on all sides, it looks like the only entry will
be from beside the burnt-out synagogue.
And another thing, about the brothel: they managed to get out of it, but it cost
them 60,000 roubles, a thousand roubles for each girl
12 March The police have now reduced the transaction fees, which weve
seen more and more of recently on all goods and partially on glass and so on.
All lanes leading to the Ritterstrasse are now blocked with wooden anti-tank
 340

defences1. And the same defences have been placed at the city entrances. Soon, it
seems, theyre going to build a wall right round the city, something like a fortified line,
with permanent weapon emplacements to protect the civilian population from ... life.
They are taking care to ensure that we can die of starvation in peace
28 April. The way things are at the moment, Im afraid even to poke my nose out
of doors. Our headmaster went to the Arbeitsamt to find out what the situation is for
schoolchildren. Of course they told him that schoolchildren wouldnt be made to
carry out work and that he didnt need to worry. Which was true on that particular
day.
The Germans give out an order in some village (Kulikov, for instance, as Ive
heard from a reliable source) to supply forty-five volunteers to be sent off to work in
Germany. The people get together, forty-five people are chosen, and there is the most
indescribable weeping and wailing in the village as they prepare for the departure of the
chosen ones. Thats in the villages. In town, despite rumours, nothing happened on
that day. But yesterday I saw the following scene. A large party of Jews was coming back
from work accompanied by a guard of Archangels2. About four hundred people. At
the entrance to the ghetto they were stopped by the police led by an officer in a helmet.
Cursing, the gendarme dragged ten victims from the crowd. There was shouting and
yelling. The police surrounded the victims and led them away. That was it. They wont
come back. Last night they took three hundred people out of the ghetto and drove them
off too. All this has created such panic that the other residents of the ghetto have stayed
at their work places overnight, afraid to come home.
But that isnt everything. Its clear that this whole business with the Jews has been
something of a novelty for the Germans, and they are now turning their attention to
the free population, too. It began today. There was a technical school in Kremenets,
attended by kids of twelve or thirteen. Today the whole school was loaded up into
vehicles and taken off. Thats motorisation for you. Next, it will be our turn
5 May. Things are gradually quietening down in town after the terrors of recent
days, now people are being selected in a calmer and more organised way, and not being
rounded up on the street. In what has been called a voluntary exodus all the drivers,
stonemasons, carpenters and other tradesmen have been taken away. A great many
Jews
It looks as if my crowd at school may have become the subject of a serious complaint
to the authorities, which might even go so far as an accusation that we have formed
anti-government societies. I found out about it from my teacher, Bopre, who is Polish.
He swore me to the strictest secrecy, but I think I can write about it here in this diary.

1
Rogatki wooden structures consisting of a barrier placed on two cross-shaped supports. Similar to the Czech
hedgehog.
2
Nickname for police.
 341

After all, if this diary should fall into the wrong hands, theres enough material in it to
have me sent off into the stratosphere
26 May Another trainload of workers, the largest one yet, left Kremenets a
few days ago. Heres what some of those who were mobilised, but managed to get
away in time, have been telling us. On the first day they were fed fairly well, given
bread and sausage, but only on the first day. The train stops at some out-of-the-
way station in Germany. There are peasant women standing on the platform, and
they select the workers they want. The workers are taken off the train, lined up, and
then an inspection begins: the peasant women walk about feeling them, squeezing
their muscles, inspecting their teeth. If any of the cattle (i.e., the workers) meets
their requirements, they take him away. The whole thing is reminiscent of slave-
trading in ancient times. And in general, all this much-lauded German culture,
on which the new Europe is being built, is highly reminiscent of medieval times.
True, there may be no Spanish Inquisition, but we have the Gestapo, the SS and
other institutions
5 June 1942. Yesterday I turned sixteen. I didnt feel the need to write it down, as it
seemed such a dull event this time round. Last year, my birthday was a joyful occasion.
I was full of hopes and dreams. And now? What can I dream of now? Of getting 200
g of bread instead of the 150 g? Thats about as much as I can dare to dream of now,
anything else seems like madness. A year ago I felt bright and confident. My exams
were over, and the summer stretched out ahead of me, with all its joys and pleasures. I
had high hopes and dreams: I would finish high school, then go to college, work in the
name of some ideal. All that came crashing down in the space of a few days, and what
a spectacular crash it was!
2 July. A year ago today, the Germans entered Kremenets. Since then I have lived
through the most difficult year of my short life.
I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was a hot, muggy day. A high-explosive
bomb fell on Shirokaya Street just before midnight, but after that, everything went
unusually quiet. At eleven o'clock in the morning there was a sputter of motorcycles
outside, then silence. But we all knew what was going on. I felt such a terrible weight on
my soul, such an unbearable feeling. All was lost. Life was over.
There was the sound of heavy boots in the street outside and the sound of an
approaching baggage train. I climb a small hill and see two lines of carts going along
the street. Huge horses, blond men in unfamiliar grey uniforms. The sound of speech,
in some incomprehensible foreign language. Soldiers glaring out from under lowered
brows, mistrustful.
A constant stream of soldiers, two columns abreast, kept marching in; the whole
process took several days. I can see now why the Germans won; when the Soviet troops
were coming through town, it only took one or two days, then the street went quiet
 342

again. Clearly when the war broke out the Germans had not only a qualitative, but a
numerical advantage. Oh well. Enough of that.
Theyve brought in new banknotes: 10, 20, 50 and 100 karbovantsy1 . The money
has been printed in German and Ukrainian
Today a plane was flying high up over the city above the clouds. It glittered just once
in the sunlight and my heart leapt it shone silver! The German planes are all painted
in dark colours. But this one was silver, so it must have been a Soviet plane, one of our
own! (perhaps it wasnt, but I managed to persuade myself, and I was happy)
20 July. Theyre putting more pressure on the Jews again. Today they were ordered
to give up 300 Communists from their ranks. It looks as if it will all end as it did in
Rovno, where there are now no Jews left at all, except for a handful of specialists who
are being spared for the time being.
27 July The Jewish question is at the centre of everything that is happening here
now. The persecution of the Jews is becoming worse and worse, there is panic in the
ghetto and everybody is expecting a pogrom. Last night two Jews were shot trying to
get into the ghetto; they had gone off somewhere in search of food. It is impossible to
describe all the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans against the Jews.
Yesterday was a Sunday. I went down to the river. A glamorous crowd had
gathered there: German officers and the deputy High Commissioner himself with his
mistress, some beer and a gramophone. It was sickening to watch them. The young
lady changed into her bathing suit. Dont imagine she went off behind a bush to do it.
She changed in front of all of them. Her husband covered her up with a cloth, but
left a chink for himself, a chink big enough, in fact, for half the people on the river
bank to enjoy the spectacle. But when he got changed nobody covered him up. Once
he had stripped off, he even lay basking for a while. Thats exactly what their culture
consists of
30 July. According to unofficial sources, there have been more reports from Lutsk
of partisans and paratroopers. As a result of the Germans policy on grain, masses of
peasants especially younger ones, are going off into the forests to fight the Germans.
Theyre attacking windmills and strings of bread transport carts. There has been more
paratrooper activity
6 August. From today onwards, all the shops which have been giving out bread are
closed. Now they have nothing to do. Theyll only be giving out flour now, and only to
manual workers.
A few days ago, the Gestapo came through our town on a visit. The occasion
was marked by the execution of 150 people in the prison. I dont want to think about
anything. I am just writing down facts. If you start to think, you could lose your mind,
and I still want to live
1
Ukrainian coupons.
 343

8 August. Everyone is expecting a pogrom of the Jews in town. All the signs point
to it happening any day now. There are six trucks in town belonging to the High
Commissioner. They have been fenced round with high boards. The Gestapo are back
in town. Theyve taken about a hundred shovels and spades from factories and other
institutions. That seems clear enough.
Evening. Something like a state of siege has been declared in town. People are only
allowed out until six.
This afternoon I was in town. Its impossible to get along the main street (Shirokaya
now Ritterstrasse); there are masses of policemen there. They shoot at anyone in the
ghetto who looks out of a window or appears on the street. According to some reports,
about 1,500 people were taken away this morning doctors, engineers and craftsmen.
It looks as if theyve taken away everyone they arent planning to shoot. Apparently
they have weapons in the ghetto. Some people have been returning fire and it seems one
gendarme has even been killed. Its a pity it was only one.
The firing died down in the afternoon but its started up again now. What will the
night bring?
This scum have the cheek to call themselves Christians. They even have an
inscription on their belt buckles Gott mit uns God is With Us. Well, if God is with
them, hes a fine one, to stand by and watch all this happening.
I can hear machine-gun fire. What can those people be thinking now, fated to die,
hiding in the corners of their rooms? It is horribly quiet. I can clearly hear revolver
shots, short bursts of machine-gun fire and the heavy thud of Schutzmannschaft1 rifles.
It will be a terrible night. If theyve decided to put up a fight, it might last a whole week.
It wont be easy to pull everyone out of the cellars in that district, with all its dirt and
back alleys.
Ill put this book under my pillow. I want to write at night. I dont want to miss
anything. Perhaps one day my notes may be used as evidence in a trial of these monsters
and their leader, Hitler, the liberator.
11 August. The last act in the tragedy of our town is coming to an end. Ill write down
now what happened yesterday. I couldnt write yesterday, I didnt have the strength.
Yesterday about five thousand people were shot. Just outside our town is an old
trench about a kilometre long. It was used by the Yakutsk Regiment who were stationed
in our town during the time of the tsar. That is where they are carrying out the executions.
The clearing of the ghetto began at about three in the morning and went on till late at
night.
A dreadful sight! The gates of the ghetto are wide open and behind them stands a
queue of doomed people, two abreast. A vehicle drives up, the queue moves forward

1
Schutzmannschaft auxiliary police force made up of native residents of parts of occupied Eastern Europe who
collaborated with the Nazis.
 34 4

silently, the first pair are laid on the bottom of the truck, the next pair are put in on top
of them and so on, in several layers. There is absolute silence: no talking, shouting or
crying. The Shutzmann officers, blind drunk, urge the slower ones on by beating them
with their rifle butts. They use their rifle butts, too, to beat down the people lying down
inside the truck. Then the truck drives off, picks up speed and rushes out of town.
From the other direction, the same trucks, with their high wooden boards, are coming
back, heaped with clothes. On top of the clothes sits a satisfied-looking policeman,
playing with a womans parasol. Its not for nothing hes looking so satisfied. On his
way back to town he hid two pocketfuls of watches, five fountain pens, a few suits and
an astrakhan coat in a safe place. And apart from that, hes had at least a litre to drink.
The truck speeds out of the city. Four Schutzmannschaft officers, standing in the
corners of the truck, swear occasionally, and shove their rifle butts into the backs of the
people lying in the trucks.
They reach their destination. The truck stops, the doomed people get out, undress
immediately, men and women, and move towards the ditch one by one. The trench is
filled with bodies, which have been sprinkled with lime. On the edge of the trench sit
two Gestapo officers, stripped to the waist, with pistols in their hands. People go down
into the trench, lie down on the corpses. Shots ring out. Job done. Next!
I cant know what people might be feeling at this last minute, I don't want to think
about it. Its enough to make you lose your mind.
There were some who tried to resist, who didnt want to take off their clothes, or to
go into the trench. They were shot on the spot and dumped into the pit.
One man was seen chewing on some bread as he headed for the pit.
The police, the only immediate witnesses of all this, would be quite sober after only
a few minutes there. They would be given another dose of alcohol to keep them going.
The Gestapo officers didnt need it. This was not the first time they had done this.
In Rovno, they had thrown grenades onto people who were still alive and later
watched the earth stirring under the pressure of moving bodies, and that had no effect
on them. They shot countless people whom they lined up over roadside ditches in Kiev.
Before the Dubno pogrom, they had singled out anyone who had some specialist trade,
and asked them all to select one of their children, and when these unfortunate people
refused to work and asked to be shot together with their families, they became indignant
and furious.
The trucks drive off one after the other. Its already evening and theyre less full
now. In them sit women, girls and children. One woman smiles, senselessly. Another
adjusts her headscarf. Dont you realise; cant you understand? In ten minutes from
now, youll all be killed! Please, put up a fight!!! But, they dont.
People are in a state of apathy. All they want is for it to be over, as soon as possible.
That is the effect of constant hunger and beatings.
 34 5

Now my friend, Arek Z., is being driven away. He sits at the edge of the truck with
his head down over the side, watching the cobblestones flashing by under the wheels.
Every stone takes him closer to his destination, closer to death before he has even
lived. Ill never forget his face, the face of someone who knows that in a few minutes he
will be dead, and in an hour his body, eaten away by lime, will be lying under several
layers of bodies. Youd have to be in the shoes of these people to experience everything
they felt, at least, those of them who could still think and feel
The nightmare is coming to an end. You still cant walk along Shirokaya Street;
now and again there is the sound of a shot, or a truck will speed along the street on its
way out of town. The last people, those who hid in cellars hoping to escape, are being
taken away and shot. The only advantage theyll have is that their bodies will lie on
top of the others. There is now unbridled looting going on in the ghetto. The police
are looting, along with anyone else who cares to, under their protection. In a few days
theyll destroy the ghetto. In a few months, there will be only an empty square on that
spot where seven thousand people lived, with their hopes and fears.
Yesterday they massacred all the Jews in Berezhtsy. Today the Gestapo have gone
off to Pochaev and Vishnevets. What happened here yesterday will happen there today.
14 August. Between the 10th of August and today there have been no more shootings
here, as the chief executioners, the Gestapo officers, have been going around other
parts of the region.
Yesterday evening they came back into town. And so they marked the occasion by
shooting another one thousand five hundred people. These people have been found over
the last three days hiding in cellars. No sooner had it begun to get dark than the shooting
started. The poor people had tried to run away under cover of darkness. Theyre all
being shot. In town, opposite the ghetto, the air is rank with the smell of dead bodies.
Its horrible. Last night and the night before there was two hours of endless shooting,
just like in June last year.
Ive heard stories of what is going on in the ghetto. A pit has been dug, and over
it stands a gendarme, chewing some bread. A stretcher is brought up to him with a
wounded man on it. The gendarme, calmly talking away to a friend, takes out a revolver,
shoots the wounded man in the head; the body is thrown into the pit and the next one
is brought up, and the whole thing repeats itself. A delightful scene. There are cigarette
lighters and silver spoons lying around on the ground, but nobody is paying them any
attention. The police have taken so much that even if they wanted to take more, theyd
have nowhere to put it. So now theyve issued an announcement that looting in the
ghetto is punishable by death.
Many people have tried to run away. Even today there are three bodies lying on
the street. Nobody has bothered to take them away. A woman who was hiding in
the Jewish cemetery was given away to the police by some children. She was asleep
 346

when they found her. Its incredible what people are capable of, once theyve seen
bloodshed.
19th August. Today they took F away.
I cant make sense of my feelings. I feel horribly pained, ashamed. Ashamed of
those who look on with indifference or even malicious glee. What, so hes sorry for the
Jews is he? The idiot!
How is F any worse than you? Shes ten times better than you, each and every one
of you, in every respect! Shes the only girl Ive ever been completely sincere with at all
times. Its such a delight to have a friend who understands you, who agrees with you.
She was a good and a brave girl. They drove her away standing up, proudly holding up
her head.
That was half an hour ago, at six thirty-five on the 19th of August 1942. Im sure that
she will die with her head held high.
F, I remember you, I wont forget you. Some day Ill avenge you!
She was my first love. All the memories I have of her are the purest memories. She
was my ideal
As I write this, there are shots being fired over by the prison. Again! Maybe one was
intended for F. In any case, shes better off now. But no, she isnt. Shes nowhere and
nothing now.
I can't imagine F naked, her body covered with lime. Her wounds. A heap of similar
bodies piled on top of her. The horror, the horror of it
21 August 1942. Yesterday, all those people who had been rounded up into the
prison were shot. Its possible to make a guess as to how many people were shot by the
fact that after the executions were finished a five-ton truck came out of the prison filled
to the brim with shoes. So it looks as if F was killed yesterday
31 August. I went to the trenches where most of those who were shot are buried.
Now the place looks like a smooth, white clearing (white because of the chalk). The
weather is hot at the moment and the bodies are decomposing and swelling up; hands
and feet are starting to appear on the surface of the soil. Dogs are taking them and
dragging them off around the outskirts of the town. The smell is appalling
2 September. Tonight they set fire to the ghetto. By three oclock about four hundred
houses had burnt to the ground. Fewer than a quarter of the houses were left The fire,
which was almost certainly carried out by residents of the ghetto, was well thought out,
today the weather conditions were perfect
What times were living through. Well never see anything like it again. I must
write it all down, otherwise I might remember it some day and not believe it actually
happened
7 September. More shooting. Where do they manage to find all these people to
shoot? Apparently theyve already shot four thousand more than the number of people
 347

registered, i.e., about twelve thousand. Theyre finding them in these enormous
underground cellars, of which there is a whole network. The police are afraid to go
down there
There is fighting around Stalingrad, within twenty-five kilometres of the city, in
the suburbs and outlying areas. Could they really take Stalingrad? Perhaps the city is
already in German hands? The steppe is on fire, but even that cant stop them. But
what sort of an army is this? Can it really be unstoppable? The heroism of the Red Army
soldiers is such that they keep on firing on the enemy even when their clothes have
caught fire. These patriots are prepared to be burnt alive for a cause they believe in. How
could I ever match that, and people like me?
21 September. Violence against the Jews has been going on for more than one and
a half months.
Today again from early in the morning we heard machine-gun fire and gunshots
from the direction of the prison. It seems there are about two hundred people left in
prison, specialist tradesmen and artisans
As everybody is aware, Belarus is now at the centre of the partisan movement.
Were hearing the most incredible stories about it. People are saying that the other day
declarations on general mobilisation were posted in the villages, signed by the USSR
Council of Peoples Commissars!1 The partisans are occupying whole villages there,
they even have armoured cars; planes are flying in openly with military supplies and all
in all everything seems to be very well organised. They probably even have Soviet-style
competition2 there
12 October. Not long ago the Germans announced that they were mobilising people
for work in Germany. This mobilisation is taking place mainly among young people
from the villages. The result is that young people are running off to hide in the forest and
join the partisans. Nobody is going to Germany. But the results are painful to describe.
Any villages that fail to provide the stipulated number of people get a visit from the
Landwirter3 (literally it translates as masters of the (Russian) land), who come with
death squads. If they come into a village and find nobody worthy of their attention, then
they take every thing worthy of their attention, and burn down the village
20 October Recently the numbers of letters arriving from those who have been
sent off to Germany have fallen off dramatically. The latest letters are all very similar:
Dont expect any more letters from me, you will see me when you see grandfather and
grandmother again. And grandfather and grandmother have long since died and gone
to heaven. People who have come back either because theyve run away or because
they are ill (these people have been particularly fortunate) tell of terrible things. The

1
Sovnarkom, the highest organ of executive power in Soviet Union at the time.
2
The reference is to the practice of competition in every sphere of Soviet economy between different institutions and
organisations, in order to increase the national output.
3
Agriculturalist, farmer.
 348

workers there are dying of starvation. We have to hope that the world will find out about
these atrocities one day, and that these evil men will get the punishment they deserve.
22 October. Im working in a factory, Im registered at the Arbeitsamt and have
an Ausweis1. It seems everything is in order, but Im shaking in my boots, all the
same. I found out that they are preparing records for everyone at our school. They
will be sent out in the next few days. So I feel lousy. That record will be as good as a
death sentence
26 October. Today a sale of cloth goods, i.e., the clothes of the Jews who have
been killed, opened in town. And there are people who want to buy this stuff! A lot of
them, too. They were queuing up for it
20 February 1943. Last night at three o'clock in the morning a group of well-
armed men on horseback and on bicycles stormed the prison. First they cut all the
telephone wires and posted sentries with machine guns. There were some carts loaded
with enormous logs going along the street at the time, taking shipments of timber to
the stations. The men stopped the carts and threw the logs across the road. Then they
disarmed the guards at the gate swiftly and silently. Some of them went into the prison
and locked the gate, so that everything looked normal from the outside. They caught
the off shift of the Schutzmannschaft unawares, and locked them all in one cell. They
led the prisoners to the back wall of the prison, where they had set up a ladder. From
there they jumped onto a tarpaulin which was held out on the other side of a wall. And
that was that.
What do we know about these partisans? According to reports, they were dressed
in identical greatcoats (but at night all clothes can look the same) and spoke Russian.
Most people think they were Soviet partisans
22 February. Now people are being arrested in town and as a result the mood is very
tense. The people theyve arrested today have nothing in common with one another.
They are all quite different in their social status, their habits and views. The tension is
getting worse thanks to reports that yesterday they were digging pits in the prison
24 February. All those who were arrested yesterday (about sixty) were shot. They
were executed in the prison yard. People who lived in the surrounding houses saw it.
Those who had been arrested were forced to undress, just as the Jews were when they
were murdered. There were some women among the group. Doctor T and his wife, who
is also a doctor, were among those arrested. The doctors wife was forced to undress
with the others. The doctor rushed at the Gestapo officer and grabbed his revolver, and
hit him over the head with the butt, but another Gestapo officer shot him in the back.
There were terrible screams as people were shot.
The town is in a wretched state. There is not a soul on the street, and not a chink
of light anywhere. Were all waiting, thinking that next it will be our turn. Even the
1
Identity card (German).
 349

bitterest enemies have only one hope now, to hang on until the Bolsheviks come. The
Bolsheviks are our liberators. But how will we manage to hang on until then? As the
front draws closer to us, the brutality will get worse. The word is that wherever the
Germans have been forced to retreat, they dont spare a single soul. And we will be no
exception
10 March. A few days ago, all the residents of the home for invalids, cripples and
the elderly were taken out of town. Some trucks came in the morning before daybreak,
and everyone was loaded into them and driven off. Rumour has it that they were all
killed. From the point of view of the Germans this was quite right: after all, bread was
just being wasted on them
The whole thing makes me so sick, I cant describe it. And like a fool, I had even
begun to hope. After all, they were getting close to the Dnieper. Its enough to make
you weep
23 March. On the 21st, partisans burnt down three sawmills in the region and killed
several Germans. Reprisals followed immediately, and hundreds were dispatched
into the pits. On the 19th, apparently on the orders of some nationalist organisation,
Schutzmannschaft officers in Rovno, Dubno and here in Kremenets have run off. Its
clear that theres some powerful organisation at work behind it.
Last night an attack was carried out on the house of a Landwirt, a German farmer,
in Berezhtsy. The farmer himself was burnt alive in the cellar where he was hiding, and
some more Germans were killed, including the regional boss What will become
of us when our commissioner is bumped off? Clearly the partisans are growing in
strength; the Germans themselves are contributing to this with all the outrages they are
committing in the villages. Of course everyone is running off to the forest. But we have
no idea who these people are, and what their political colours might be.
Will I ever see the end of it all? I will very likely see my own end, thats for sure. All
I wish for is that my notes serve as yet another indictment against the Germans
7 May. Last night the manager of an estate was killed for hiding a Jewish
woman. The woman was killed too. He was left on the street but she was carried
off to the Jewish cemetery and thrown in there so as not to pollute the air in town.
An everyday occurrence. Something more unusual happened this morning. The
Ukrainian Metropolitan Aleksy was killed on the road between Kremenetsk and
Lutsk
8 August. HURRAY, COMRADES!! The Eastern front has been breached. Im
jumping for joy. My nerves had been worn to shreds by all the latest reports on fierce
fighting along the whole of the southern front. I knew that they were trying to break
through the German positions, where all their top SS divisions were concentrated, and
all their Tigers1 and where the soldiers are all armed with submachine guns. Every day
1
German tank.
 350

I would ask myself, have they done it yet? And the answer would always be no. But
today, the answer is Yes, they have!
9 September. In two months the Red Army might be HERE and then at last Id be
able to stop keeping this stupid diary. Im heartily sick of it. I have decided to keep it
from departure to arrival, and it will be the happiest day of my life when I can write
the last words: THE END
11 January 1944. I havent written for a long time. Ive had more important things
to do. Now the front is exactly one hundred and fifty kilometres away from us. Theyre
evacuating the town. Im getting ready to run off into the forest, and Ill bury this diary
now. Ill be happy if some day I get the chance to dig it up again.
GREETINGS COMRADES! DEATH TO THE GERMAN INVADERS!
For several months now Ive been listening to the news from Moscow every day,
and I know exactly whats going on at the front.
Well crush these vile beasts who have tried to destroy our Motherland, every last
one of them. Never in her entire history has Russia stood as high as she does now.
But after the war, the USSR shall stand even higher. I hope I live to see it.
 352

This diary was written right in the line of fire, almost on the front line itself ...
Stalingrad. During the war, the Aratsky family lived in the city at 45 3rd Naberezhnaya
Street, a street beside the river that came under constant bombardment, close to the present
site of the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad. Anyas father was a carpenter and her mother
was a housewife. They had nine children. The family was already coming under artillery
fire when Anya, the middle daughter, began her diary. By the time the diary breaks off,
Anya, her mother and her siblings had joined the Red Army, and Anya had bid a long and
tearful farewell to her brother Viktor who had left for the front
We were discharged from the Red Army owing to illness, and issued with papers giving
us permission to go to our relatives in the Krasnoyarsk region. We didnt go back to our
home town and the ruins of our house until after the war, Anyas sister explains in an
accompanying note she wrote when she decided to donate the diary to the Museum of the
Battle of Stalingrad. The diary was passed on to Argumenty i fakty by the museum staff.
The Germans have been completely routed, and now we see long lines of prisoners of
war filing past, writes Anna in February 1943. Its a horrible sight; they walk along frozen,
half-dressed, snivelling. Who asked you to come here, you vile beasts? Id like to thrash the
lot of them. To avenge my father, our wounded earth, my ruined youth. Yesterday was my
birthday, and how did we mark the occasion? Nobody even wished me a happy birthday.
The years of my youth are passing in the blaze of a raging fire, without joy or happiness. We
are cold and hungry, without shoes or clothes.
The accompanying note to the diary tells us that Anya became a book-keeper after the
war and worked at the Kachinsk Higher Military Aviation Academy for more than thirty
years. Then she worked ten years in the Volgogradselkhozvodstroy Trust. Anya didnt have
a family of her own. She died in 1996, and then her sister brought her diary to the museum.
Anyas younger brother Viktor did not return from the front.
 353

Today is the 30th of August 1942. Its Sunday today. Weve been sitting in this
dugout for a whole week now. Theyve been bombing us since the 23rd. There is
nothing left of Stalingrad but blackened rubble and victims who are all innocent
people.
Today is the 4th of September, were in the dugout again. I dont know when
it will all end. Weve shed so many tears over these last thirteen days. Today is
Friday. On Sunday it will be two weeks, and were still being bombed. Theres
nothing left to bomb; and yet theyve been bombing us all night, and just before it
got light they dropped incendiaries on our street. One fell near the fence between
us and the Kudryavtsevs, right into the bin of galoshes, but we put it all out. More
incendiaries fell near the Bogarovs and the Gorelikovs and one fell on the street
near the Vedeneevs. The Vigilyanskys house was burnt down, we were surrounded
by a ring of fire, but God spared us thank goodness.
Oh, God, could it be that we wont get out alive? Its frightening; barricades
are being built on the streets. It looks as if the nightmare is still ahead of us. Today
Im sitting on the steps of the closed dugout, writing on my lap. Dear diary, when
will all this misery end? Now I keep remembering the dream I had at New Year. I
dreamt of a great big, white cross that was a sign of my endurance. And when we
told our fortunes with a saucer, mine was suffering without end1. Oh, I dont want
to die! And without ever having lived. If I survive, Ill never forget 1942, and this
dugout. Now its morning, I dont know what time it is, maybe eleven or twelve.
Today is the 20th of September, and we still havent got out of this wretched
dugout. For exactly a month now weve been bombed continually. Weve lived
through such terrible danger, I dont know if anyone has ever had to go through
anything like it. Fayka Tsvetkova was killed by a mine. Were sitting here more
dead than alive. If only God would have mercy on us, and let us live.
14 November 1942. I had thought that in that barrage of fire, in that misery,
endless suffering and hunger, Id never feel like writing this diary again. But today
something happened that encouraged me to write.
All this time I havent had the chance to write at all, and in any case, Ive had
no paper, nowhere to sit and write, and nothing to write with.
But today, I suddenly got hold of everything I needed, all at once. (A soldier
made me a present of a notebook, I asked for a nib at my staff headquarters, and it
was easy enough to make ink using a pencil, and a pen holder from a stick.) Were
in a building now, a hostel, so I can write as much as I like.
Id got so used to writing this diary. It felt terrible all that time, not to be able to
share things with you my silent creation! I began to keep a diary in fifth year at

1
In Russia a popular type of fortune-telling is carried out using an upside down saucer and a letter chart the effect is
supposedly similar to that of a Ouija board.
 354

school, but that diary has been lost for ever. I used to take it everywhere with me,
even into the dugout. Maybe somebody has read it. All my childhood memories
were in that diary; its a shame I lost it. But whats a diary, anyway? When I think
that now Ive lost the dearest person in my life my father! Memories of Papa
keep coming into my head, every day, every hour, every minute. It was good when
he was with us. We were all together as a family, and in our own home. Now who
knows where fate will scatter us?
We were in the dugout right up until our dear Papa was killed. He was shot by
a German sniper.
I remember, six weeks ago, on the evening of 26 September, it was very still.
There was a full moon, not a breath of wind, not a cloud in the sky, and not a
single shot anywhere. Papa came and said, Come on, lets all go out of the dugout
and get some air. And he took Lida, his pet, in his arms, as she is the youngest.
Shes only six. We all gathered round him. That evening, he was thoughtful, for
some reason. He seemed to be staring at a far-away spot, out on the Volga, and we
could even see the reflection of the golden moonlit path on the water in his eyes.
Papa told us that we were all grown-up already (except Lida) and that wed all be
able to help him, and soon wed drive out the Germans and build our house again,
and wed build it bigger and better than before. Then we started talking about the
different places wed all been to. Papa smiled for the first time that evening, and
said that Id been to more cities than everyone else. It felt so good to sit there
beside him. When he was with us, the war didnt seem so terrible. Then he got us
all settled for the night in the dugout and worked for a long time up above, fixing
up the dugout.
On 27 September, Papa woke us early in the morning. It was quiet outside,
the September sun was shining brightly, and the water shone as still as a mirror. It
seemed as if everything was over, and the war had finished.
Papa was getting ready to go and light the fire as he did every morning, to
make semolina porridge. Just then, the two Vityas came running and shattered the
deathly quiet for the first time that morning, shouting out to one another. Vitya
and Pachik left. And Papa opened the roof of the dugout and shouted out to our
neighbour: Shura come on out, are you still aliv his life was cut short in the
middle of that word, which he never finished. There was a shot, or rather a sort of
crack, and Papa slumped down slowly on the steps of the dugout. It all happened
in a moment and was like some vague dream; I heard it all just as I was coming
out of my morning sleep, and when I heard that shot, or that crack, I opened my
eyes and the first thing I saw was Papa slumping down, helpless and all covered
in blood. Mama stood there as if spellbound, unable to move a muscle. I got to
him first, as I had been sitting at the edge of the dugout, next to Mama. But it was
 355

This group portrait, taken in a photographers studio, complete with rakish berets and lipstick, might have been
taken in peacetime, but in fact it was taken in November of the first year of the war. Anya (second from the
right) had not yet begun her diary. Stalingrad was yet to be plunged into the heat of the battle, yet to become
a watershed and a symbol of heroism. All this was yet to come.
Photo from the collection of the Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad.
 356

already too late, Papa was dead, even though he still had a pulse, his heart was still
beating and blood was gushing out from his right temple. I tried to put my finger
out to stop the blood, but my finger went right into the hole, and the blood kept on
and on pouring out
We all screamed, and Vitya came running, probably at the sound of our
screams. he stood there silently, staring at Papa, wide-eyed,with tears running
down his cheeks, and meanwhile bullets kept whistling past his head, and past his
ears and shoulders, probably from the same sniper, but he kept standing there, not
taking anything in. I shouted Run, Vitya, run away! Then there was some fierce
shooting, but we hardly heard it, as the roof of our dugout had come down, leaving
only a little opening and we were all completely grief-stricken. Where was Vitya?
We didnt know what had happened to him, as he was up on top and we were in
the dug-out. Then we saw Pachik, or rather, we heard his voice. He was looking
at Papa with the same astonished look as Viktor, and just said, What, has Uncle
Misha really been killed? and he was crawling around the dugout, like a cat and
saying Bandage him up tightly. Then it all went quiet and the next thing a hand
dropped through the opening into the dugout, dripping bright red blood, and we
saw feet in boots that looked like Vityas. Then we realised that Viktor had been
killed and was lying on the roof. Our grief became twice as great, and I think we
took leave of our senses.
We sat there next to our dead father for two days, without food and water and
without sleeping. A lot of people were killed on that day. Papa was the first. Our
neighbours the Sosninas, Vera and Yevdokia Pavlovna, were killed. And near our
dugout there were a lot of dead soldiers.
It was only late in the evening of the second day that Aunt Marusya came to
our dugout, crying quietly, and we heard our Viktors voice. We couldnt believe
it: Viktor was still alive. It turned out that it was Vityas great friend Pachik who
had died; he had come to share in our grief and been killed himself, probably by
the same sniper.
Aunt Marusya was crying so quietly we couldnt hear her. After all, he was
her precious only son. Then she and Viktor helped us drag Papas body out of the
dugout.
The next day, as soon as it got dark, we wrapped up Papas and Pachiks bodies
in sheets and buried them in the Podlesnovs cellar. We took a sack of flour that
we had had with us in the dugout and set off towards the Volga. We didnt even get
dressed in warm things; we set off barefoot on the long, terrible journey.
When we got to the ravine, I saw the dead bodies of Vera and her mother.
Nobody had covered them up with earth. I walked along last of all, my head was
spinning and I felt completely weak. I went tumbling down the ravine like a stone,
 357

I couldnt walk any further; my feet had swollen up and hurt terribly. Some soldiers
helped me to my feet but I fell over again as if I was drunk. I couldnt stand up. I
remember I didnt even thank them, I was in a daze. My nerves were stretched to
breaking point. When we got to the river bank at last we all rushed to the water.
Our mouths were completely dry and we were desperately thirsty. We gulped down
water for a long time. There were lots of dead soldiers right there on the river bank.
It was a long and gruelling walk. On the way to the crossing point we had to
pass under heavy bombardment and mortar fire. We walked all night but we kept
having to drop face down on the ground. The Germans kept firing constantly, and
sending up flares. At times, the sky would get so bright it seemed theyd be able to
spot anything, even a fly. We kept dropping down to the ground, and as soon as the
lights faded wed get up and start walking and keep walking
I had Lida by the hand all the time, she was afraid, and crying all the way. I did
what I could to encourage her, but it was very difficult and dangerous going along the
bank, along the steep edge. One false step and we could have gone tumbling down
By the time we got to the 62nd crossing, which was at Red October1, it was
almost morning. There were a stretchers all over the bank with seriously wounded
people lying on them. There were three small steamships. They didnt want to
take us onto a ship, as the ships were all overcrowded, but the commanders heart
was clearly touched by the sight of Mama and Lida and the rest of us, and he said
quietly to the wounded: Move up, comrades, and well take this family. We got
on (there was no room to sit, only to stand, almost on one leg) and cast off from
the bank. Immediately, some German planes appeared. Im not sure how many,
but there were a whole lot of them, and immediately bombs started raining down
on us. It was terrible: bombs falling in front of us, to the side, behind us, and
our little ship pitching about so badly that we thought we would capsize at any
moment. By some incredible miracle thanks to our experienced captain, who
performed some incredible feats by a miracle we managed to get to the other
side. They hadnt even made the boat fast when they gave the command: Spread
out, dont bunch together in a group Those of you who can, run straight for the
forest. That was easy enough to say, but how? We had no strength left to run, our
legs simply wouldnt work, it was very hard to walk, but we hurried to get into
the forest as it was already daylight. We were all hoping to reach the safe zone
of the forest as soon as possible, and anyone still able to walk hurried off in that
direction, but not many could; most of the passengers were badly injured. There
were stretchers with injured people lying about everywhere. The medical orderlies
and the ships crew were heroic: some carried stretchers, some helped others to
walk, even though they could barely walk themselves. And the planes were coming
1
The Red October factory, on the banks of the Volga, site of heavy fighting in the Battle of Stalingrad.
 358

in low overhead and shooting at us, even though they could see we were injured.
When we got to the forest which was only a few metres from the bank, we collapsed
with exhaustion, we hadnt the strength to go any further, our feet were swollen...
Then we got into a truck and drove off where to? We didnt care. There
was more bombing. We had to keep getting into the truck, or getting out quickly
and either running off to take cover, or throwing ourselves flat on the road, face
down. Then we made some tea in the forest. We had a proper rest, lying down. All
the time wed spent sitting in the dugout we hadnt been able to lie down. Next
morning, we got back into the truck and drove away from our city, burnt and still
blazing, and away from Papa
We got as far as Kamyshin on vehicles that were going our way. Autumn came
early this year, there was freezing rain and sleet, and we had nothing to wear. All
our clothes were back at home in the city, and now our house was gone too all
that was left was a ruin. Our house burnt down on 21 September and everything
in it was destroyed. Wed buried all our winter clothes in the yard, and we had no
shoes or warm clothes, and nowhere to take cover.
Nobody would let us stay the night, and anyway, what could we have offered
in return for a place to sleep? There were so many of us: five of us children and
Mama. So we stayed out in the open with nowhere to lay our heads, shivering and
wet in the freezing rain. I remember how we found a cellar used for keeping goats
just outside Kamyshin and crawled into it. That was bliss, but it didnt last long.
The owner came along and yelled at us and chased us out. So we set off again,
hearts heavy as stones, not knowing where to go. Night was coming and it was so
cold, with heavy rain and sleet. Lida was crying. We kept walking along the road
until we reached a checkpoint. A few people were grouped around the booth. We
stopped there, too, hoping we might get a lift somewhere anywhere. We sat there
for a long time, soaked through to the skin, but what could we do? Then a truck
drove up, and an officer got out of the cab and came up to us. He asked us who we
were and where we were going. We told him that we had nowhere to go, we wanted
to go somewhere, but had no idea ourselves where. Then he said, What about
joining the army as volunteers? Ill take you into my field laundry brigade, every
one of you. I can see youre all fit for work, well give you uniforms and feed you.
We were all delighted, but Mama wasnt sure. It was difficult for her to let us all go
and stay on her own with Lida, who is only six. But the officer said, Ill take you all
on, and we can register the little girl as a trainee. What more could we ask for?
The work was hard. We had to dig in frozen soil, wash laundry in freezing water,
put up tents, saw timber, and go on mess duty. It was difficult for all of us but the
main thing was, we had a roof over our heads. We had tents to live in, we had shoes
and they were feeding us.
 359

By 23 August 1942, when the city was almost wiped out completely, about 100,000 of the 400,000
inhabitants were evacuated. On 24 August, anybody who had survived the meat grinder tried to leave the city.
Photo by Emmanuel Evzerikhin/TASS.
 36 0

Viktor has to go on mess duty most often. He goes in place of me, Maria and
Tonya. Hes a good boy. Everyone in the brigade respects him, and hes good to
everyone. He's very fond of Lidochka and she loves him, too. When he comes back
after duty, tired and wanting to lie down and rest, he still finds time for his little
sister, and gives her attention, making paper boats for her, and playing with her.
Hes such a sweet boy. Well, I suppose Viktors the only man left in the family
now. Papa is dead and Sasha is somewhere at the front; we dont know where. Who
knows, perhaps hes been killed too. I wonder if he will find out where we are and
what the Germans have done to us?
Vitya is the only one we have left. He looks after the rest of us, takes pity on us,
and takes all the burdens of our family on his shoulders.
Our only comfort at the moment is that were all still together, and that we
havent been captured by the Germans. How I hate and detest those damned
monsters what have you done to us? If I ever get the chance Ill take revenge
on them for Papas sake, for our ruined house, and for our city. And what about
Sasha? Where is he, whats happening to him? After all, hes a sailor in the Black
Sea Fleet, and Germans are there now, in the Black Sea. Is Sasha alive? Does he
know what the Germans have done to us, does he know about our terrible loss? If
hes alive, then of course hell know that the Germans have arrived in Stalingrad.
Still, its unlikely theyll take the city. As they wrote in the Stalingrad Pravda, You
thought youd take our Stalingrad take a hail of steel instead1. No matter what,
we wont give our city up to the Germans. Were in the army now, too and we wont
give it up, not ever. Curse you, Hitler, you wretch! You can do your damnedest,
but you wont take our Stalingrad. Its terrible to think of what the Germans have
done to our city. Not a single house has escaped unharmed. Just think, the whole
city has been destroyed by those damned monsters. Whatever happens, however
hard the Germans try to get into the city and get through to the Volga, all the same,
they wont see the beautiful Volga, or drink of the Volgas water.2
Im sitting writing and everyone is asleep. My oil lamp is burning low, please,
dear lamp, keep burning! Im so desperate to write, Id like to confide in someone,
but how? Tonya is asleep but I couldnt even tell her whats bothering me today.
Ill never forget this day. Ill remember it for the rest of my life.
This evening, our lieutenant Yasha came to see me and told me to come to the
headquarters at nine oclock, a commanding officer wanted to see me
But who was this commanding officer? I cant distinguish between the different
military insignia, but he had rectangles on his shoulder tabs. How old was he? I
couldnt tell. He looked serious, but his eyes were lively and smiling, like Papas

1
The original slogan relies on a play on words: Stalingrad and stali grad hail of steel.
2
Quote from Song about the River Volga by Dunaevsky and Lebedev-Kumach, from the 1937 film Volga Volga.
 361

As soon as I went in he called me Anya and invited me to sit down. I sat down.
He knows everything about us. He knows that Papa was killed by the Germans and
that he was an honest worker and a good man, and that we all have high school
education, and that we have a little sister called Lidochka whom we all love. He
knows that Mama is finding things very difficult and that she did well to join the
army as a volunteer. But how does he know all this? Who told him, I wonder? And
why did he ask to speak to me, rather than Marusya, Tonya or Viktor? Why? He
chatted a lot to me, even offered me tea and sweets, which I of course refused.
Then he told me that I should keep my eyes open, be vigilant and quick-witted,
and that this would all come in very useful for my work in future. I told him that
I liked to gossip, that I never hid anything and that I was talkative and soft in the
head. He laughed loudly for a long time and then patted me on the shoulder and
said that suited him fine. He said things would be a bit easier for me from now
on, that he would register me with something called Voentorg,1 but why? What
have I done, and why am I so important? Then he said a lot more, which I cant
write down here. Then I signed some documents. Im not to tell anyone, not even
Mama. She had been waiting for me, she couldnt sleep, asked me where I had
been and gave me a horrible row. And Tonya was waiting and asked me what was
happening but I couldnt say anything, not to Viktor, not to Maria, though I love
them all
24 December 1942. I havent written for a long time in this diary. And anyway,
how can I write? Where? All this time weve been under terrible fire. We moved
on from the village Iosif Stal2. It was so good there. It was warm, we lived in a hut
and went around putting up tents. We even had fun there. All the young people
were working together and we had a nice commanding officer. We even had proper
get-togethers in the evening, we sang songs and chewed sunflower seeds. There
are lots of them in the fields, in the snow.
Then we struck camp and loaded all our belongings onto carts. Mama and Lida
rode in the carts and we walked alongside. It was night and there was a terrible
blizzard. Its a wonder we didnt freeze to death.Then we stayed in Lapshinki for
a bit, in proper military dugouts. We left there by train, it was a long journey and
the train was bombed. Then we had to go on by foot, in bitter frost and a terrible
blizzard. We got to the station of Shishkino, but it was nothing more than a name.
All there was there was a badly destroyed building, without a single undamaged
room. We had been counting on stopping there to warm up, but the whole station
was ruined, and there was nowhere to take shelter, even for a single night. The

1
Voentorg (Voennaya torgovlya) was a network of special army shops which catered to the everyday needs of soldiers
and their families.
2
The name of the village, Joseph Steel, is a variant on Stalins name.
 362

stationmaster was camping, more or less, in one corner of the ruined station
building. He had something like a room there; hed boarded up the holes in the
walls. He had a home-made stove and was heating the place, which was almost
hopeless, as it was practically out of doors, but he turned out to be a good man,
and took Mama and Lida under his wing. There was a terrible blizzard, the snow
was so thick you could barely see a couple of paces in front of you. The rest of our
party set off into the steppe and tried to put up the tents. The wind kept tearing the
tents out of our hands, and our hands were completely numb and refused to work,
but we had to get at least one tent up, no matter what. We did it in the end, by the
skin of our teeth, which was a great relief to all of us. We lay down to sleep right on
the bare ice, it was horribly cold and I dont know how we managed to survive and
didnt freeze to death.
Then we set off again, rode for a long time, then walked again, and we all came
down with a serious illness, rabbit fever, or tularaemia. I remember that I got sick
first, on 29 November, and then Tonya, Lida, Maria, Mama and Viktor all got
sick. It was a very bad illness, with a very high fever and delirium endless, endless
delirium. On 13 December, our unit set off again, walking and riding The sick
among us were taken too, on horses. There was a terrible blizzard.
20th February 1943. Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! Stalingrad was liberated on the
3rd of February! The Germans have been completely routed and now we see long
lines of prisoners of war filing past. Its a horrible sight; they walk along frozen,
half dressed, snivelling. Who asked you to come here, you vile beasts? Id like
to thrash the lot of them. To avenge my father, our wounded earth, my ruined
youth. Yesterday was my birthday, and how did we mark the occasion? Nobody
even wished me a happy birthday. The years of my youth are passing in the blaze
of a raging fire, without joy or happiness. We are cold, hungry, without shoes or
clothes.
All this time I havent had the slightest chance to write. On 24 December we
arrived at the village of Kachalino and set up camp in the village of Kachalinskaya,
which is in our region.
Then began the most unbearable time we had to spend living in tents. December
was just so cold, it was a terrible winter. It was bitterly cold, and we had nothing
warm to wear. We were so worn out with illness that we couldnt walk. To get out
of my tent I had to crawl out on all fours: my feet hurt so badly I couldnt put any
weight on them. Vitya was always with me, he was the only man among us, and he
was badly ill, too. Inside the tents there was solid ice underfoot, as the tents had
been put up in the steppe in December. There was nothing to sleep on. All I had
to wear was an old Red Army pea-jacket and some big Red Army boots with foot
wrappers. We didnt even get to sleep together, but spread out wherever we could
 363

This photo of the Barmaley Fountain in the centre of Stalingrad was taken on 23 August 1942, after the
town had been subjected to a horrendous blitz (2,000 raids took place in the space of a single day) during
which, according to various estimates, between 70,000 and 90,000 civilians died. The fire storm (after the
H.E. bombs the Germans dropped incendiaries on the city) consumed the entire centre of Stalingrad, with the
buildings and those who lived in them. In some areas, the temperature reached 1,000 degrees Celsius.
Photo by Emmanuel Evzerikhin/TASS.
 36 4

find a space in the tent. If you put your jacket down on the ground you have nothing
to wear, but if you put it on, your legs are frozen stiff in five minutes and youre all
doubled up with cold, you need a jacket on top of you and one underneath you and
you have neither. We have two makeshift stoves in the tent but they didnt make
much difference in cold like that. The wood was damp and burned badly and it was
nearly minus forty degrees outside, and the tent was made of tarpaulin. One of the
soldiers made a place for me next to the fire on a box one metre long. I sat there
for a while, but as soon as I started to doze off, I would wake up from cold, or with
a start because I was falling.
So this was how we saw in the New Year of 1943! When will this war end?
23 February 1943. Today is a special day, Red Army Day! It really is a time
for celebration, as now we are advancing on all fronts. I dont suppose Hitler will
have the nerve to come barging in like that again. Stalingrad will have taught him
a lesson he wont forget.
After the liberation of Stalingrad Viktor and Maria went there on 14 February
in the hope of bringing back some warm clothes, but they came back with nothing,
all our things had been dug up and stolen. Now we really have nothing, no Papa,
no house, nothing. And all our things were well camouflaged, because when our
house burnt down, a great heap of ash, clay and brick fell on top of everything.
But it seems that wasnt enough, theyve all been dug up and taken away. Papa
made such an effort to hide them well. Its so hurtful, and it makes things so much
harder for us. Were starving, freezing, eaten by lice, we have nothing to change
into, no clothes to put on. But there are people who profit from our tears and our
tragedy. Yet its not just our tragedy, its the tragedy of the whole country. And
who dug them up? Greedy khokhols and thieving goblins, of course1. Shameless
idiots, thieves and looters, who know that Papa is dead and we have nothing and
no one left. They know how difficult it will be for Mama to look after us without a
roof over our heads, and theyve taken away our last hope.
We were discharged from our unit because of our illness. Mama was particularly
ill. We had nowhere to go. I think well have to go to Minusinsk in Siberia, where
our cousins live. Theyve invited us to go there. They have a big house and their
own farm. We havent had any money at all since October. Weve been given
papers that allow us to travel and to get ten days worth of food. But weve already
eaten all the food. Theres no one in charge here in the village, and nowhere to
find work. How are we supposed to live, and what are we supposed to eat? I wrote
a letter on the 4 February to M. I. Kalinin2, but I havent had a reply.

1
Khokhol a Russian insult or nickname for a Ukrainian (stereotypically seen by Russians as greedy;) the other word
used here (translated as goblin) is shishiga a mischievous female spirit from Russian folklore.
2
Mikhail Kalinin, head of the Politburo of the Soviet Union until 1946.
 36 5

Tonya has found work somewhere in a canteen, in the kitchen. Mama, Maria
and Lida have moved into a dugout and Vitya, Tonya and I are still living in a tent
Time passed. Our unit moved away altogether and we were left with nowhere
to live. There was no room for us in the dugout where Mama and Maria, Lida and
one other little boy, Vova, were living. And then we found a dugout like a little
mud-brick hut. The only people living there were soldiers, there were no owners;
it looked as if theyd been evacuated. So we moved in. Every day, new lodgers
would come and go, stay a night and move on. Soon, people started to think we
were the owners. The hut has no ceiling and the stove is falling to pieces, but we
can still light it. The walls are black with soot and the door doesnt shut. The
whole dugout is full of rifles, spades, grenades, cartridges and all sorts of other
junk. There are people everywhere, on the stove, on the floor and in the corridor,
theres nowhere to even put your feet.
But theres room for everyone. As they say, The more the merrier. Theres a
desk here made out of a kind of metal stand, and an oil lamp, a proper big one with
a nice big flame. Its perfect, and I can write, everyone is asleep and its so quiet.
Sometimes our lodgers share their food with us, theyre good sorts; we had some
Siberian infantrymen here for a few days. They kept our spirits up no end, and really
gave us something to hope for. They did everything they could to help. They were a
terrific bunch, and I wont forget them in a hurry. In the evenings wed play cards with
them and have lots of arguments, but we parted on very friendly terms, all the same
26 February 1943. Such a sad day, with yet more tears. Yesterday we saw Vitya
off to the army. Hes only seventeen! This wretched war is swallowing up everyone
and everything. How many people have died already? Papa has died, perhaps Sasha
has died too, we dont know where he is or whats happening to him Surely this
war will finish soon? Could Vitya end up on the front line too? Will we ever see him
again? Hes pretty much been on the front line for a long time already. Think of all
the bombs he put out, back in Stalingrad, and all the fires he put out under heavy
bombing and artillery fire. What a hard life weve been sent
It didnt take long to get all his things packed. There wasnt much to pack; he
was wearing everything he had. Mama had made some flat cakes for the journey
out of the stale flour she and Maria brought from Stalingrad. The cakes were quite
inedible, bitter and black as coffee, but we were glad of them as we were starving.
Vitya stood, thoughtful, holding his call-up paper, looking sadly at Mama and
Lida. He didnt say a word, and it was difficult to know what he was thinking at
that moment. He just took Lida in his arms, exactly as Papa used to, lifted her up
and kissed her a few times. He looked so pale and thin; he still isnt back to health
after his illness. He was the last of us to fall sick and looked after us when he was
sick himself. He never has enough to eat and hes seventeen, a growing boy
 36 6

We walked along slowly. We didnt have anything to carry. Vitya put his bag
over his left shoulder and gave me his right hand. We walked along like that, holding
hands. I didnt once get any snow in my enormous boots. I cried all the way and
he tried his best to encourage me, to console me. Now I have the chance to settle
scores with Hitler. Ill avenge myself on him for everything. For Papas death, for
our beloved city of Stalingrad, and all the torments and tears weve suffered. And
for not letting me finish school. But Im telling you, Anya, as soon as this war is
over Ill finish school and you will too, and all of us you, Tonya and I, well all
go to study at college. Though afterwards Ill try to get into military college and
become a commissar, as thats been my dream for a long time now. Maybe Ill go
to a military academy and devote all my life to our army. I love our army. But dont
cry, Anyutka, soon the war will be over. Ill come home victorious, and buy you all
fine clothes and dresses. Perhaps those goblins are profiting from the things they
stole from us now, but it wont last. They wont get away with it. If my big brother
is still alive, the two of us will deal with them after the war
I didnt sleep all night. I kept remembering how we walked from the dugout to
the gravel road. The trucks kept driving past without stopping. Then one truck full
of people stopped, and you kissed me and jumped on board. You stood up straight
and the wind ruffled your hair, you waved your cap at me, and I stood there, crying,
rooted to the spot. I stood there until the truck was out of sight. It was so hard to go
back home the same way without you. I cried all the way home, blinded by tears.
Our life suddenly seems empty, and even colder than it was before. Lidochka has
been expecting you since yesterday; she keeps asking when Vitya is coming. I want
to play with him, she says. He promised to make me another boat. But you wont
be coming today, or tomorrow. Will you ever come back? After all, youve gone off
to the slaughter, to war. Oh, God! when will the war end?!
7 March 1943. After Vitya left, Tonya and I started working in a BAO1 as
laundry workers. Its very difficult work. Weve never had to do so much washing
by hand before. In the army, we used a washing machine. We needed to wash 120
items of laundry with one piece of soap. The girls who have been working there for
a long time can do it fine, they have enough soap and they dont chafe the skin on
their hands. But our hands are chapped and bleeding all over and we only manage
a few items of laundry with one bar of soap. We work more slowly than everybody
else because we dont know how to do it. We do all the washing in one big wooden
trough. Afterwards, we all have a wash ourselves. Its exhausting. They feed us, and
we take half our food back for Mama, Maria and Lida. Were going about hungry;
theres no bread, and they usually give us dried pea soup. If we get a piece of bread
we generally take it back for Lidochka, after all, shes little. I often feel dizzy. After
1
Batalyon aerodromnogo obluzhivaniya aerodrome ground staff battalion.
 367

For several months, battles took place on the streets of Stalingrad. All this time, thousands of women, children
and old people all those who had not managed to be evacuated to the left bank of the Volga took refuge in
the citys cellars and bomb shelters.
Photo by Gorg Lipskerov/TASS.
 368

work we go home exhausted we have to walk five or six kilometres. The three of
us, Tonya, Anya and I, usually walk back together. Its scary walking back alone.
There are lots of bodies lying about on the road dead Germans. Sometimes we
walk along singing, it helps pass the time, it seems quicker, and we get over our
tiredness. Were still young, after all. We talk about all sorts of things on the way
back. Mostly we talk about how good life was before the war. There are some pilots
who use the same road. They live near us. They run to catch up with us and say,
and Look, its some of our girls! Recently, theyve taken to running on ahead of
us and (at least I think its them) propping dead Germans back up on their feet
and putting rifles in their hands. Its horrible to walk past something like that, so
we run past as quickly as we can. They stand there laughing, but we dont find it
funny. Its terrifying. Their faces are all torn up; its horrific. Why on earth would
anyone play a joke like that? When we get home, we tell our lodgers, the infantry
soldiers all about it, and we all have a laugh together
23 March, 1943. Theres still no word from Vitya. I cant believe he hasnt
written to us in all this time. Hes been away almost a month. What has happened
to him? Its so awful to be without him. He was our rock, our guardian. Theres
not a day or hour goes past without us remembering him. We remember Papa and
cry
The other girls keep inviting us to go to the club with them every day, but we
keep refusing. What do we have to wear? In the evening, they all dress up in these
beautiful white blouses, Ive no idea where they got hold of them, theyre silk or
something. They have shoes too. But what are we supposed to wear? Apart from
pea-jackets and enormous boots made out of kersey1, we dont have a thing! I do
have one dress from home, but nothing to wear on my feet. My head is cropped
short, as I had all my hair cut off when I was sick with rabbit fever. I made some
curls out of my hair and sewed them to a piece of thick paper. I lay it on my head,
then put my blue beret on top. Then I put a black lace scarf over my beret and
let the ends hang down at the sides, so that it looks from a distance as if I have
plaits hanging down on either side. I dont know who, but somebody gave me the
nickname Dariko2. Other people call me Karenina.
Well, anyway, on 20 March we plucked up our courage, Maria, Tonya and
I, and went to the club for the first time. First they had a talent show, then there
was dancing. Anya Zhigimont gave me her galoshes to wear. Theyre so beautiful
(especially when youve been wearing size 42 kersey boots) just like patent leather
slippers. We loved the talent show, well, naturally: its been over six months since we
heard any music or singing. I even danced with Maria and then she left with Fedya.

1
A type of substitute leather made using treated fabric, used in wartime Russia in the manufacturing of army boots.
2
Dariko was the name of a Soviet film made in 1936 starring Tamara Tsitsishvili, about a Georgian peasant girl
 369

Tonya and I stayed behind. A boy asked me to dance, a pilot called Valya. He asked
me who I was, and where I was from, and I told him. When the dancing was over he
walked us a little way home. We came home with the sounds of the waltz, foxtrot and
tango still ringing in our ears. Mama said, Theres nothing to eat and off you go, half
starved, to a dance. Weve danced all night but theres nothing to eat.
28 March 1943. We were discharged from the BAO on 25 March. They asked
us to go on with them but I refused. On the 25th, Tonya and I left for Stalingrad.
We travelled non-stop by train to Voroponovo. We got off the train just before
evening. We had to walk, but we didnt know where to, and where we could spend
the night it was 30 km to Stalingrad. We set off, not sure where we were going, we
were in the middle of the steppe and there wasnt a single house or light to be seen.
We saw a bit of a hill and went towards it but wed hardly gone a few steps when
we heard Halt, who goes there? Not one step or Ill shoot. We stopped. Then a
soldier came up and began to shout at us. Where dyou think youre going. There
are mines here. We got the fright of our lives, and asked him to show us how to
get through. He showed us and said, Theres a dugout not far from here. You can
stay the night there. We got there, and an old woman came out and straight away
asked, Do you have any bread?We gave her two pancakes which Mother had
given us for the journey. We sat down in the corner and had barely started to doze
off when a whole crowd of men, soldiers and civlians, came piling in. They were all
drinking vodka, singing and swearing. Then a fight broke out
3 April 1943. Tonya and I have just got home. We were at a dance. Its a bit of
a joke, I suppose, but we went to a dance at the airmens club. Thats what being
young is all about wed had nothing to eat all day, and we were hungry, but as
soon as it got to evening, off we went to a dance. Anya Zhigimont gave me her
galoshes again. I need to find myself a pair like hers, but where? It wasnt dark yet,
and Valya and a friend appeared and asked us to a dance. We went to get dressed,
but when we came out, neither Valya nor his friend were there. We were surprised
they hadnt waited for us. So then we set off alone, without partners. When we
arrived, the music was playing and the dance had begun. Some young lads were
standing about in the doorway and we felt embarrassed and wanted to go home.
One of them even asked, So who have you girls come to dance with, then? But at
the same time, we were swept in by another crowd of people and pushed into the
crowd of dancers. Tonya and I danced with each other. I saw Valya, and he saw me
but he didnt approach me once. What was the point of inviting me and then going
away without waiting? He acted as if he didnt even recognise me. I wonder what
was going on? I think it may have been because I was so badly dressed.
Whenever a new tune started up, Tonya and I would begin to dance, without
waiting for anyone. It was awkward standing waiting to be asked, and it was only
 370

our second time at a dance. Once or twice, people tried to break in on us, but we
kept stubbornly dancing together. In between dances a fellow came up to me and
asked me to take the lead but I said I dont know how to lead. They began to play
the last dance, a foxtrot called Dark Eyes, and Tonya and I went out on the floor
and whirled around this way and that without stopping, and we heard people all
around saying, Look at those girls! Good for them, and they said they didnt know
how to lead. As soon as the music stopped we got on our coats and just about ran
outside, and then ran all the way home.
Its funny to think that Tonya and I went to a dance dressed like that. Mama
said to us, Why on earth do you want to dance when youre starving?
 372

Zoya began to keep her diary two years before the fascist occupation of the Crimea, when she
was only twelve. I was always reserved, as a child, and even in my family I felt lonely, I didnt
receive enough affection from my parents, and my diary became my friend. Her father worked
in a Yalta clinic as a dentist and her mother was chief accountant at the Aeroflot sanatorium.
The head of the sanatorium, Viktor Ivanovich Maltsev, who is frequently mentioned in Zoyas
diary, was later to become Commander-in-Chief of Aviation under General Vlasov1 and
was executed in 1946. On the pages of the diary we also meet the granddaughter of Pyotr
Bagration2 and the widow of the painter Ivan Aivazovsky3, who lived in the same house as
the Khabarov family. And we hear of pavements running with rivers of Massandra wine, taken
from warehouses and poured away so that the Germans would not get their hands on it.
Zoyas diary finishes with a brief, dramatic entry, which tells of the arrest of her parents
on a trumped-up charge under article 584, and the deportation of her grandparents. After this,
Zoya moved about from relative to relative and worked in an army hospital. The prosecutor
who had participated in the trial of her parents gave Zoya a note addressed to the famous
Moscow lawyer Falk, known to charge extortionate sums for a representation; the note read,
Help this girl. This was the biggest mistake of my life. Armed with this note, Zoya set off for the
capital. Falk did indeed help her, without asking for any money. Her parents were released from
prison. Zoya then studied to become a dentist. This was not normally possible for the daughter
of former prisoners, but she was helped by people whom her father, Aleksandr Khabarov, had
saved from the camps. Captives had been brought into the dentists surgery masquerading as
patients suffering from toothache. Once inside, they would change into civilian clothes and then
go out and lose themselves in the crowd, while Red Army commissars dressed in their clothes
would take their place in the convoy going to the camp. Zoyas father had saved eight people in
this way. These were the people who would later help Zoya receive an education.
Shortly afterwards, Zoya moved to Moscow to be with her husband. She had two sons. She
worked in dentistry for fifty-five years. Throughout the turbulent decade of the 1990s, when
she had already retired, she continued to treat patients in her own home. Several times, she
was on the point of destroying the diary which she had hidden so carefully from her parents.
I didnt realise it was a historical document, she says. After typing out the text of the diary
on a computer with the help of friends, Zoya Aleksandrovna did, in the end, throw away the
timeworn pages of the original notebook. Only one page survived; it is now in the collection
of the Kerch Museum of History and Archaeology. Zoya Aleksandrovna, who now lives in
Novaya Moskva, would not let us publish a number of pages from her diary. On those pages,
I wrote about love; about the sort of love that changes your life, love that comes from the soul
and only the soul, she told us. You can print them after Im dead.
1
General Andrey Vlasov was at the head of the Russian Liberation Army, who fought on the side of the Germans in
the hope of liberating Russia from Stalin. After the war they were handed over to the Russians by the Allied Forces and
executed.
2
Pyotr Bagration (17651812), a general in the Russian Imperial Army who played an important role in the Napoleonic
wars.
3
Ivan Aivazovsky (18171900), Russian romantic landscape painter who lived and worked in the Crimea.
4
Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code concerned counter-revolutionary activities and led to people being arrested as
enemies of the workers.
 373

1939.
10 November. Papa has decided to take us out of Sebastopol. He keeps repeating the
same thing therell be a war soon. I dont want to leave.
17 November. Mama is packing our things. I asked if I could stay behind at least for
the holidays. Mama is getting angry
21 November. Yesterday I said goodbye to my friends and to Vera Romanovna.
Were leaving tomorrow. Our cat, Vaska, is coming with us. Im so sad to leave this
town. I know every building here. Theres the chemist where Aleksandra Aleksandrovna
used to work. They have rabbits and guinea pigs there, as well as medicines. Aleksandra
Aleksandrovna left before us, for Leningrad. Papa persuaded her to go, to get away from
the war. We have a bakery on the corner of our street. It always sells warm bread and
delicious pastries.
There are horses on the corner of our street and Karl Marx street. They wear hats in
summer and have bags under their tails, so they dont make a mess in the road. And then
theres our yard, where we always played hide-and-seek and churki palki1. Why do we
have to go away?
1 December. The day before yesterday we arrived in Yalta by truck. It was night time,
and very warm. It smelt of something nice and fresh, like leaves. You can hear the sound
of the surf, and theres no wind. That night we just brought our luggage inside and went
straight to bed. We have one semi-basement room and a kitchen. In Sebastopol we had
two rooms on the first floor. Papa says nobody wanted to exchange apartments with us.
We only just managed to organise this exchange.
Today I went to school. I was put in class 5 B. There are some much older pupils
in the class. Some have been kept back a year, some have even been kept back twice.
Theres a Greek boy, Afanasiadi, who sits behind me. Hes already eighteen. I havent
got to know everyone yet
20 December. Today, Papa woke me at five. He told me to go and queue for bread. I
told him you can get someone to bring you bread if you ask, but he made me go anyway.
He said I need to get used to hardship, and to become more independent. I shouldnt
rely on my parents. Were at war with some people called Finns, and in Yalta there are
bread queues.
Back in Sebastopol, there was a blackout, and we went to school with gasmasks. It
was dark on the way back from school, and the street lights were blue. Here, theres no
blackout, and the streetlights are white. We go to school without gasmasks.
I stood in the bread queue for two hours and brought back one loaf.
Another thing, Vaska disappeared as soon as we arrived. Mama says cats are more
attached to their homes than their owners. So hes gone off looking for his home. I want
to go back to my own home too, like Vaska.
1
Churki palki is a childrens game in Russia played with sticks.
 374

1941.
20 April. At last, Papa has exchanged our basement for an apartment on the seafront.
Its completely different where we are now. There are so many people here, and a big
grocery store nearby. My friends Rita and Tanya live near the seafront too. Papa had to
pay 7,000 roubles for the exchange. He borrowed the money from his technician.
But the Zhalondievsky family didnt move into our basement, they went straight to
Tashkent.
Now I walk along the seafront and go to the city park and the summer theatre. You
dont have to buy a ticket, you can climb up a tree. Its lovely. We have two rooms and
a balcony. And now every evening I can see the sea, stars, and palm trees. Our house is
right next to the 7th Party Congress sanatorium. Theres always a lot of music, noise and
merriment next door.
30 April. For some reason there are a lot of servicemen in town, especially airmen.
Theyve put extra beds in the sanatorium where Mama works. There are more airmen
than usual. Papa was talking again today about how there would be war soon. Maltsev
came for a housewarming. He brought a soldier with him. They sat and drank and talked
about some danger or other. In the evening I went to the summer theatre. I love living
here
2 June. Today I handed in my essay. Now I have maths on the 8th of June.
In the evening I went to the summer cinema. Theres a blackout in town now, and
no lighting in the cinema either, but they still show the film. Grandma has come to stay.
10 June. I passed all my exams. I got a certificate of merit. Nobody congratulated
me. Papa is worried about something. Mama just said its no more than she would have
expected.
The school is taking pupils on a five-day walking trip across the mountains, on foot
across Roman Kosh to Alushta. Mama wont let me go.
16 June. At last, they gave me permission to go. Were setting out on foot today,
through Dolossy. Mama and I had a row. She keeps saying, Dont you see, theres a
blackout in town, well probably be at war soon. Why is it that all they do is talk about
the war?
21 June. We had such a wonderful time walking in the mountains.
The first day we climbed up Krasny Kamen. There was a light rain. We walked into
a cloud. It was like being in mist when youre lower down. Our feet kept slipping on the
pine needles. We stopped for a rest and went on. It was beautiful, despite the rain. We
could hear the wind rustling in the pines trees. We got to a little hut and had something
to eat and went to bed. There was no rain the next morning. We were in a nature reserve.
We saw deer in the distance. There were birds everywhere. We went on with our walk.
We rested for three hours in the afternoon and then walked as far as a canyon, but didnt
go down into it. We spent the night in a Tatar village. They fed us, and gave us a bed for
 375

Zoya began her diary a few years before the war.

A faithful friend, confidant and consultant, the
diary was also to become a chronicle bearing
witness to the German invasion of Crimea.
Photo from the archive of Z. Dobrokhotova.
 376

the night in a hut. The girls stayed on the womens side and the boys on the mens side.
In the morning they gave us breakfast and then we went down into the canyon. It was
damp and cold down there.
We had a look at an ancient cathedral, which wasnt being used any more. There was
a stream running through. The trees were covered with moss. There were no pine trees
there. Then we had a rest and set off for Alushta. We walked for a long time. Then we had
another rest and ate the last of our food. We went down to the sea and bathed, and came
back to Yalta by bus. We were only away for three days, not five. For some reason the
teacher didnt want to go from Alushta on foot. I got back home after dark. Mama got a
fright, but I just said to her, See? Theres no war,and went to bed.
It was such a wonderful trip.
22 June. Last night I dreamt that war had broken out. I was walking along in a field
full of trenches. Suddenly, two Germans came out of a trench and walked towards me. I
woke up and said to Mama, I just dreamt we were at war. If youre going to tape up the
windows, use white paper. She told me I was silly and sent me off to the sanatorium for
breakfast. I set off. On the seafront, next to the Intourist office, I saw a crowd of people
and heard the word war. I ran to see Nelka and then to the sanatorium. When I got
back, Mama was already taping up the windows with newspaper. I got quite a telling-off.
Papa had gone off to the Military Commissariat. He is staying to organise the military
hospital.
23 June. Papa is running about trying to find a car to send Grandma away to
Simferopol. The buses arent running. Papa says hed be prepared to give a lot of money
to leave Yalta. There are crowds of people on the streets of the city, all trying to leave.
But the only people being sent away are servicemen. Mama went to work. The airmen
are going to be taken away soon. Maltsev went to the Military Commissariat, but they
wouldnt take him into the army. So Mama will still have her old boss. Hes very fair and
Mama says hes good to work with. He doesnt let other people steal, and doesnt steal
himself, either.
25 June. Nelkas father was taken into the army. Hes a commissar. And Tanyas
father, too. My father is already working at the army hospital.
Sebastopol is being bombed. The beach is empty. Nobody wants to swim. Theres
not a soul on the seafront. Papa has hung blankets at the window, so not a chink of
light gets through. At night we have to go on duty on the roof. Everyones expecting to
be bombed. Apparently, the Germans use fire-bombs. Its very dark and very boring.
3 July. Today we listened to Stalins speech. Hes promising to crush the Germans,
but they keep coming. People are saying that every time the Germans pass through
anywhere, they destroy everything and shoot people. Maltsev came to see us this
afternoon. Hes so grand and proud, but he was talking quietly with Papa about
something. Hes angry that the Germans have already got so far and that our troops
 377

are retreating without putting up a fight. Papa wants to go to the front. He was in the
navy for twenty-three years, after all.
Mama says that we need to stock up on food, but there is no food to be found. All
they have in the grocers shop is milk and soured cream. Theres no meat. There are
people in civilian dress now in Mamas sanatorium. The airmen have gone. I overheard
Maltsev saying that all the airfields have been smashed up and a lot of planes destroyed.
The planes are made of plywood covered with canvas. A great many airmen have been
killed. Maltsev himself was an airman during the Civil War. He bombed the Whites. It
was after the war that he became a manager. Mama says that at one point during the
Civil War he was a colonel. In 1937, they were all imprisoned, and he went to prison
too1. They tortured him in prison, and knocked out his teeth. Then in 1939 he was
released, given back his medal and sent to Yalta as the director of a sanatorium. And now
he wants to go back to war
15 August. Yalta is emptying out. Jews are allowed to leave the city. Mama wrote to
Moscow to ask permission to leave. But she and Maltsev have not been given permission
to leave. They were told, Anybody spreading panic and rumours will be prosecuted.
Its because theyre management. But why are all the Jews leaving? The people who
swapped apartments with us left as soon as theyd done the exchange. The wounded
are starting to appear in the army hospitals. Papa is at work for days on end. Mama too.
There are no wounded in the sanatorium, though, just servicemen of some sort.
Yesterday we sat on the balcony. The sky was full of stars, and the sea was splashing
on the shore, everything was quiet. Its hard to believe were at war. There are only two
families left in our building. There were some Germans living beneath us, but they were
sent away on the second day of the war. Dr Ravinovich, who lived on our floor, left ages
ago. The Zelenikhins are still here. Hes Russian and his wife is Jewish. But theyre not
leaving. Their son is horrid; hes always trailing after me. Ive got nothing to do, so Im
sitting writing. If Im killed, then my friends will find out about my life some day. After
all, diaries last forever.
1 September. Today I went to school at last. Theyve put us in the building opposite.
It used to be a hotel. There are fewer children in my class than there were before
Lessons were very dreary. They let us go home early.
I forgot to write about how I saw a huge ship sinking. I was walking along the seafront
when I saw planes over the sea. There was a big steamer out at sea, coming from the
Odessa direction. The planes began to dive at the steamer one after the other and bomb
it. Then there was an explosion, a cloud of black smoke and the ship broke in two; the
bow and stern rose up, and then it sank under the water. Small boats set out from the
shore to try to rescue people. One of those who went out was Sashka, the son of people

1
In the purges of 1937 in which many prominent members of the Red Army who had fought in the Civil War were
accused of spying and treason. Many were executed.
 378

we know from Sebastopol (Papa persuaded them to leave Sebastopol when we did).
Sashka hasnt come back. His mother is distraught and crying. Shes still hoping hell
come back.
There are lots of servicemen in town. The sanatoriums have all been turned into
army hospitals.
5 September. Yesterday I found out for the first time what its like to be bombed. I
didnt see how many planes there were, I just heard the explosions. I knew there were
some slit trenches behind the Aeroflot sanitorium. Theyd been dug before the war
began. I ran there from Papas hospital as fast as I could. By the time I got there, the
raid had finished. I went to look at the bombed buildings. One bomb had fallen on the
Crimea Hotel. Some organisations are based there, and people were still at work. They
started carrying out bodies. They were yellow and covered in plaster. It was horrible.
All our wireless sets have been taken away. Now we only have loudspeakers to
listen to. All day long they talk about success at the front, but our army keeps retreating.
Theyre talking about how Kutuzov retreated deliberately, in order to crush Napoleon.
In school were being made to go round the hospitals and sing songs to the wounded.
I dont sing well, and dont want to go, but Papa says I have to. He says there may be
trouble if I dont. But I dont see why, seeing as I cant sing. Why are my parents always
afraid?
10 September. Opposite our house theres a pier and a lighthouse. The lighthouse
has been switched off, and now theyre trying to blow up the pier, beside the harbour
station. If theyre not going to surrender the Crimea, why are they blowing up the pier?
Its frightening now at night. You can hear the sound of the sea, which seems grey and
horrible these days, somehow. Theyve stopped bombing us. Apparently, Sebastopol is
being badly bombed. I havent had any letters from my friends. I wonder where they are.
Mama wrote to Moscow again to ask to be evacuated, but they said no. Viktor Ivanovich
came to visit. They dont want him in the army.
27 September. I went on duty up in the attic instead of Mama. People are saying
that the Germans might drop fire bombs on us. Theyre also talking about some boy
signalling out of a window when a plane appeared over the sea. Hes been arrested. We
hardly ever turn on the lights now. Were already used to being in the dark, fumbling
about for everything. Its not so bad in the house during the day. But at night, its so quiet
and empty, the air seems alive. Ive given up music.
Theyre trying to blow up the pier day and night, but its still holding strong. Evidently
it was solidly built. There are even more servicemen in town. Are the Germans really
coming? People say that the Germans have been shooting people in the areas theyve
taken. And theyve been putting people into vans and gassing them1.

The gas van or Gaswagen was a vehicle equipped to make a mobile gas chamber which killed passengers using carbon
1

monoxide gas from the vehicles engine. It was used by the Nazis in former Soviet-occupied territories.
 379

15 October. Yesterday German planes flew over but didnt bomb us. Mama and
Papa are appalled. We cant leave. They still havent managed to blow up the pier. At
night, I got up and went to the window. I saw ships coming into port. By morning, they
were all gone. They were grey, with patches on them. There were no lights on them.
Before, the ships coming into port were white
29 October. The radio was shouting, We shall not surrender sunny Crimea to the
enemy, then suddenly the announcement was interrupted by someone speaking in
German, and then music. Rumour has it that the Germans are already in Simferopol.
Maltsev gave the order to kill all the cows and pigs on the sanatorium farm plot and give
the meat to the employees. People are hurriedly packing things into big bundles, getting
ready to evacuate.
31 October. Today I watched the troops retreating: a column of soldiers shuffling
along, tired and dirty, in foot wrappers and dirty boots. Local people are giving them
bread and other food. Late in the evening, some vehicles set off from town; trucks carrying
NKVD workers and their families. They were taking furniture and plants with them.
Some trucks arrived at the sanatorium. Mama asked them to take us to Sebastopol. They
refused, telling her there was no room. Stools and rubber plants are more important than
people. They took some bundles of things and left.
Viktor Ivanovich gave the order to rip the bundles open and give everything out to the
employees. Everyone is in a panic, afraid of the Germans. Mama took written receipts
from everyone for all the things they took. We got home late.
2 November. Were leaving our apartment. Yesterday, I ran out to see a river of wine.
Theyd brought all the wine out of Massandra. The wine was flowing down Massandra
Street, like water after a downpour, and running out on the other side of the harbour
station
10 November. We left for the sanatorium. There was nowhere to write. The buildings
were all occupied by NKVD officers. We went to the house of a doctor Papa knows
called Troitsky who worked with him at the army hospital. We stayed the night there. On
the 3rd, they began blowing up Yalta1. At night we watched the seafront burning, all the
big buildings and sanatoriums. At the other end of town, beyond Massandra, we could
hear shooting. There were militiamen still fighting in the city. Mama is distraught: our
house and everything we have will burn down.
At night, a nurse came running to see Troitsky, She told him there were still sixty
wounded in the army hospital. Papa and Troitsky ran off to the hospital. They carried
out all the wounded and found places for them in local peoples houses. Then a creep
from the NKVD came along and wanted to blow up the hospital, but this other fellow
wouldnt let him. The officer was shouting and swearing at Papa and Troitsky, saying
they had no right to take the wounded out and not to leave them to the enemy. He was
1
Soviet troops began blowing up the city as they retreated, in order to make it difficult for the occupying enemy.
 380

shouting that they hadnt heard the last of it. But then this other fellow laid into him,
and he ran away. When Papa and Troitsky came home, Troitskys wife told us to get
out quickly. Mama and I sat in the kitchen until it began to get light, then went to the
sanatorium. Nobody had slept. The NKVD officers had gone already. We met Viktor
Ivanovich.
The night before, he had wanted to go up into the mountains to join the partisans,
but the men guarding the forest road hadnt let him past. Papa stayed at the sanatorium
and Mama and I went to see what had happened to our apartment. We went along
Volodarsky Street, then Pushkin Street and Vinogradnaya. There were Germans
everywhere. They had stripped to the waist and were soaping themselves right there on
the street. On Vinogradnaya there were a lot of Germans on motorcycles. They have
curious capes, theyre long and fasten at the ankle, so they look like boiler-suits.
Nobody paid us any attention. We went along Morskaya Street to the seafront. A
young man was lying dead in the street beside the entrance to the sanatorium yard. Later
people told us that hed stopped them blowing up the 17th Party Congress sanatorium.
We made our way through to our building. It was frightening on the stairs cold and
echoey. When we got to the apartment, our cat ran out to meet us. Her head was shaking
and she was meowing terribly. After all, everything around her had been burning and
exploding. We took some food and some linen. Then set off to our old apartment, the
one in the basement. Murka was quiet. We wanted to go along the seafront but the
asphalt was red hot. The Uchan Su baths was still burning. The Dzhalita had been blown
up and the Intourist hotel was half destroyed. We went along Litkens Street and got to
our basement by going through backstreets and courtyards. After that, we went to get
Papa. It's raining and very cold. We spent the night in the basement and in the morning,
Mama and I walked to the sanatorium. The Germans have ordered all the employees to
get ready to leave. We spent all day clearing the wards. Mama was taking an inventory
of what was left. Viktor Ivanovich came out from time to time. Hes terribly upset. Hes
going about in a military cape.
The Germans have posted an order for all doctors and teachers to go to the
commandants office. Papa has gone too.
We were in the basement for three days. After that, we went back to the seafront.
Our troops had blown up the power station before they left, but didnt blow up the
water supply, so we had water at home. We lit the stove and had something to eat at
last. Our neighbours have come back, too. Yesterday, Mama and I were walking back
from the sanatorium with a basket of food. It was already getting dark. When we got
to the bridge over the river, two Germans came out of the bushes. I was so afraid I
couldnt say a word, even though I understood what they were saying. They checked
our basket and gave us a bottle of Massandra wine. Then they let us go. We ran home
to our basement.
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15 November. Today I went out on the balcony to watch the German soldiers on
parade. They were stepping deliberately, lifting their legs up very high every time they
took a step. I looked to the right, towards the balcony of the sanatorium. Suddenly I
noticed Hitler, who was presiding over the parade, with Mussolini next to him. I was
terrified, and lay down flat on the balcony. They didnt see me. Hitler was shouting
something. Then Mussolini spoke. A woman came rushing up to the Germans with a
pot of geraniums. They took the flowers from her and she ran alongside the parade for a
bit. Bootlicker! I crawled off the balcony and didnt go out again.
Its horrible outside, drizzling and sleeting and very cold. The waves are flooding
the seafront, breaking over the iron railings. Papa has gone off to work. Theyve opened
the clinic. Half the building is to be used for Russians and half for Germans. Mama
has gone off to the sanatorium. Shes been appointed as some sort of superintendent.
Viktor Ivanovich decided to give himself up as a prisoner of war. He went off in his
army uniform. He and the other prisoners were kept in the school. People went to feed
them. They also took a lot of the prisoners away. We went to visit Viktor Ivanovich, too.
He complained that they werent making any distinction between him and the other
prisoners. Papa suggested he run away. Papa left without his overcoat having given it
to Viktor Ivanovich. Then Viktor Ivanovich and I left together. Nobody stopped us,
and I took him off to the sanatorium through the back streets. Now hes sitting in his
apartment, and not going anywhere. His unofficial wife is with him. Mama calls her his
acting wife.
18 November. Mama took me with her to work. She persuaded some man to take
on her duties for her. Then she walks round taking receipts for everything she is handing
over. All the staff have been sent to the kitchens. Several women have been put to work
peeling potatoes. They wanted me to peel potatoes too, but I told them I mustnt ruin
my hands. One of the Germans asked me So what can you do? so I said that I play
the piano. He said, Play. I played a few Strauss waltzes. More Germans came along
and listened, and then gave us some food. I didnt play any more, and I didnt peel any
potatoes either. Im not going to stay at home alone. The Germans have put up a notice:
All Jews are to wear three stars. Idiots! Some people have put on stars. And theyre
shouting insults at one another, too. Today I heard one Jewish woman shout at another
You mangy yid! It would be better to keep quiet
22 November. Mama has given up all her duties. Were running out of food. Theyve
opened a shop, where you can get 100 g of sticky, smelly bread between three people,
and ten kilos of frozen potatoes. Theres a shop selling second-hand goods now, too. It
sells things that have been looted from museums. Mama couldnt bear it: she spent her
last 1,500 roubles on a very beautiful ornament from the Vorontsov Palace. Theres no
food on sale anywhere. There are only clothes and other things on sale at the market.
Our money is worth ten times less than German marks. One mark is worth ten roubles.
 382

Before they retreated, Soviet troops burnt and destroyed everything they could. They
poured paraffin over the wheat in the collective farms and set it alight. Now this wheat
is being used to make bread, which is being given to the Russians. Some women have
been trekking out into the Crimean steppe to exchange things for food in the villages.
Two women came back before they had got to Nikita; theyd seen a pile of mens corpses
stacked like firewood. It was probably the militia fighters killed trying to defend the city.
Mamas heart has started to bother her. She has a heart condition. And now so many
bad things are happening.
11 December. Were in a new apartment. Its still on the seafront, about sixty metres
from our old one. At the housing administration office, they offered us an apartment
straight away. There were Jews living here before. They left as soon as the war began.
One room is about forty square metres, and the other about twenty. Theres another
woman living in the apartment, a Russian woman. Theres a shared kitchen. Its very
dirty. The owners left a lot of enormous pieces of furniture behind. Our furniture was
moved by German soldiers. About twenty of them came and moved everything in two
hours. We put all the owners furniture in the big room and set up our things in the little
room. Theres a stove there. We cook and sleep in this room, and Papa treats patients.
Tatar women come from the villages and pay with food. Papa is very malnourished.
Im going to school on Sadovaya Street. The only one of my former classmates who
is still there is Bakshi. Hes wearing a star. And Vitka Kiryushkin. I used to fight with him
in sixth year but now he doesnt bother me. The classes are boring. Everyone has gone
very quiet and the teachers are gloomy.
12 December. A decree has been posted All Jews to come to the Gestapo in the next
three days with all their possessions. The Jews have gone trudging off. Theyre taking
beds, mattresses, carpets and suitcases with them. Papa met a doctor he knows and told
him to run into the forest, but his friend said, Theyre sending us to Palestine. Papa
told him that the Germans have been shooting everyone everywhere they go. But this
doctor kept saying, The Germans are a cultured nation; they wouldnt lie to us. But the
Bolsheviks are always lying. Papa asked him to leave his daughter with us, at least. But
he didnt want to.
Another of Papas friends came to say goodbye. He's a lawyer. As he was saying
goodbye, he said, Theyll kill us anyway, whatever happens. Theres no point trying
to run off into the forest, you cant get in there without a pass. Only people from the
Regional and District Party Committee get in there, and the young fools they use for
guards. Were being thrown to the wolves. The worst thing of all is to see traitors from
your own people dancing attendance on the Germans, making denunciations and
turning in Jews and Communists.
Our former neighbour, a Jew, is working for the Germans. He informed on Mama,
saying she was a Jew and wasnt wearing a star. A German came to our house with a
 383

Bulgarian translator. Because Mama has a Bulgarian passport. My grandfather is pure

Bulgarian and my grandmother Russian. They managed to pacify our neighbour.
Our air force has started to carry out bombing raids, but only Russian people are
being killed. A bomb fell through three storeys at the Rossiya sanatorium and exploded
in the basement. Russians were working there, sorting potatoes. Several people were
killed.
13 December. On my way back from school today, it was very slippery, and I slipped
on Morskaya street and knocked over a soldier in German uniform. I thought he was
going to shoot me. But he got up, helped me to my feet and asked if I was hurt. Then he
walked home with me. When Papa opened the door he got the fright of his life. But the
soldier, who was actually a sailor, and not a German but an Austrian from the Croatian
Navy Command, told him what had happened. When he found out that Papa was a
dentist, he asked him to pull a tooth out for him. Hed gone to his own clinic but they
wouldnt take it out there. Papa pulled out his tooth and he went away. Hes called
Marian Barstello. He speaks a bit of Russian.
14 December. Marian came this morning. He brought Papa a tin of potted meat,
bread and salami in return for his help. The food came at a very good time. Mama was at
a loss she had nothing left to cook except sugar and a bottle of mustard oil. The cats
hungry too. Papa sometimes goes out to the shore to pick up dead fish. The Germans
know its for the cat, so they dont bother him.
16 December. Yesterday they bombed our school. Theres nowhere for us to go now.
It was a good thing nobody was killed. Why was our school a problem?
19 December. All day yesterday we heard machine-gun fire out at Massandra. They
were shooting the Jews. Apparently, they rubbed poison on little childrens lips, so they
died immediately. Bakshi was killed too. It was our scum who carried out the shooting,
with two Germans giving the orders. Some people managed to get away. I remember
this idiot who used to work as a gardener in Mamas sanatorium, who joined the Gestapo
as soon as the Germans came, and then went about trying to intimidate everyone. Those
are the sort of vile beasts that murder their own kind. Still, theyll get whats coming to
them.
24 December. Yesterday there was a roundup. Papa was coming back from the
clinic when he was seized by the police. They were grabbing people all of them
men - and driving them into the ghetto. I dont know how I found out about it, but I
grabbed my coat and rushed off to Massandra. There were masses of men there. About
a thousand, probably. I dont know how I managed to find Papa. When he saw me,
he looked quite lost. I took him by the hand and led him downhill towards the ravine.
Then I took him along the bottom to the harbour station. The roundup was over and
nobody stopped us. Papa didnt go to work this morning. He said he wasnt going to
go in any more.
 384

The Germans are putting guns all along the seafront every six metres and filling
all the spaces with sandbags. All the streets that come out onto the seafront have been
blocked with bollards made of tram rails. Apparently theyre expecting a Russian
landing. The front entrance to our building has been closed. We have to go via
Morskaya Street. Marian comes to see us every day. He has to take breakfast to his
officer; he says theres too much food for him and he always ends up throwing food
away. He doesnt bring very much, but its something, at least. Mama is washing
peelings, milling them, and mixing them with bran to make rissoles. Id love some
buckwheat porridge or fried potato. Papa is finding it difficult what with the hunger,
the difficulty of earning a living, and the bribes.
26 December. Yesterday evening about six Germans came. They asked to sit in
our house for the night. They were guarding the guns, and it was cold outside. Theyre
expecting a Soviet landing. We had to go into the unheated room. It was impossible
to sleep. We were cold and hungry. The Germans say theres been a landing at Kerch.
Mama is very worried about Uncle Volodya. Somebody said something about them
being evacuated. At the moment the only radio station we have is Old Wives News.
We dont have a wireless set or get broadcasts. We have to rely on hearsay.
Our commandant is an idiot. He insists that men take off their hats and bow, and
that women bow when they pass him. Neither of my parents are going outside.
31 December. Marian came and brought some food: bread, meat paste and a
piece of salami. He also brought a gramophone and some records. The gramophone
is round, and the size of an alarm clock. He said hell come this evening to see in the
New Year with us. His father has a restaurant in Vienna. They like to celebrate New
Year together as a family. His family are easy-going. They like to help other people.
His mother is a doctor.
1942
2 January. So here it is, New Year. It feels as if weve been at war for ever. Life in
peacetime seems like a dream. It feels as if weve never had electricity, or school, or
the House of Pioneers, or good things to eat. Sebastopol is getting a hammering. The
earth is shaking from the bombs. You hear it at night in particular. How are the poor
people who live there surviving? What are they eating and where are they sleeping?
Its horribly cold this winter. The palm trees outside our window are rustling their
frozen leaves. Theres a light snow falling. When we came to Yalta in the winter, it
was warm, with the smell of damp leaves. What a difference the last two years has
made.
3 January. We heard a rumour that a horse belonging to some Romanians had
broken its leg on Volodarsky Street and had to be shot. Mama and I ran there. The
granddaughter of General Bagration lives opposite the Emir of Bukhara Palace. She
had dragged the horse to her house with the help of the Romanians, and was selling
 385

the meat. We met this woman Nina. Shes about seventy or eighty years old, bad-
tempered, with black hair and a Roman nose, wearing a headscarf. She invited us
into her house. It was cold inside, and the wall was shaking from the bomb blasts.
I dont know how the mirror stayed up she had a huge mirror in a black frame,
covering almost the whole wall. She also had an enormous black bed, an enormous
black cupboard and a black cat. We bought about 10 kg of meat. We barely managed
to get it home. Mama made soup and meatballs. There was a scum on top of the soup
and it doesnt look appetising, but Papa said it was good.
6 January. Its Mamas birthday today. She didnt get any presents at all. When
will this war be over? I feel like having cake and soda water.
Marian came. He is going to Simferopol. He asked for Uncle Valyas address and
took some cigarette paper and soap to swap for food in the villages. Its extraordinary:
the Germans are at war with us, but hes helping the Russians. Not all soldiers are
beasts, after all. Marian told me a lot about Vienna. He curses the war and cant wait
to go home.
15 January. Marian came back with a half-full sack of flour. When we opened it,
a mouse jumped out. Marian laughed and said, Look, I got you some meat, too. He
said that he was being transferred to Feodosia, and in the evening he brought over his
friend, who is Croatian. Hes called Vinko Danevi. He asked Papa to have a look
at his teeth and fix them. Papa agreed to do it.
18 January. Now Vinko is coming to us just as Marian used to. He brings us food.
Vinko is tall with very blue eyes and is always singing Why should it be, that he winks
at me? He has a Russian girlfriend called Natasha and lives in Alushta. He says he
wants to go away to Yugoslavia and join the partisans. He cant stand the Germans.
20 January. This morning Mama and I went off to the sanatorium. People told
us the Romanians had brought in some flour and were exchanging it for gold. Mama
hadnt any gold except a gilt watch that stopped in 1914. I used to play with it when I
was little. She decided to risk it. A woman we know came with us. She had a beautiful
diamond ring. The Romanians gave her six kilos of flour, and they gave us fifteen!
Mama and I ran away from there as fast as we could. We were afraid they would find
out the watch wasnt gold, and take back the flour.
We ran into Viktor Ivanovichs wife. She doesnt have enough to eat. Viktor
Ivanovich is writing a book, and shes working for the Germans in the kitchen and
swapping things for food whenever she can. She told us about one of her colleagues,
who had gone out beyond Simferopol to exchange some goods. While she was away,
the Germans killed her ten-year-old son. He had gone out to pick up fish from the
shore. They mistook him for a partisan in the dark. When his mother came home,
they had already brought him in and laid him out on the table. The Germans said
they were sorry and gave her money. She threw it away.
 386

There are some curious blackout blinds in the sanatorium now: Hebrew writings
on parchment made of asss skin. Theyve killed all the Jews and now theyve put these
blinds up.
Strange.
Im not studying, as the school is in ruins, but Im reading a lot. Its good that we
have so many books. Ive read Zola, Balzac and Maupassant. Grandma has a huge
library. She used to lend me books to read.
25 January. In Simferopol, life is quite different. Theres no bombing or shelling.
They have food at the market and the theatres and cinemas are open. But here its
deathly quiet, and were being bombed.
28 January. A German came to have some fun with our neighbour yesterday. He
got drunk and came in to ask Papa for some spirits. We didnt have any. Then he put
a gun to my head and shouted On your knees! I refused to kneel. Papa and Mama
were frightened half to death. Then Papa said he would get some wine and went to the
neighbour. The German was still holding the gun when the neighbour, who was very
frightened herself, took him away. An hour later he barged in again, demanding spirits
again. Then he spotted my white gloves and took them. In the morning, Vinko came,
and we told him what had happened. He went to his officer and told him everything.
30 January. Vinko came to see us. He said that his officer had gone to the commandant.
That creep turned out to be one of the soldiers from the commandants office. He was
drunk and walking about in my white gloves. The commandant ordered him to be
shot for looting, frequent drunkenness, corruption of others and illegal relations with a
prostitute. Thats what Vinko told me. I dont know if it was true or not, but he hasnt
come back here again.
Vinko is bringing more sailors to Papa. They bring food and money. But theres
nothing to buy with the money. All they have at the market are clothes and things, and
gold. You can buy something for a piece of soap or tobacco. In our yard theres a German
provision store. The German who works there came to us and asked us to give him our
cat. All the cats and dogs in Yalta have been eaten. Papa didnt want to give her to him,
but then he took the cat to the shop at night and stayed with her. She caught ten rats in a
single night. The German gave us a big tin of potted meat, bread and meat paste.
1 February. The cat has been catching rats by herself. The German brought us food
again. Papa shared it with his technician.
Were being bombed again. Today we were about to walk to the sanatorium again,
and we stopped for a minute outside our front door. There were two Germans about
fifty metres ahead of us. Suddenly a plane came diving in. We ran towards the city park.
Where the Germans had been, there was nothing but a bomb crater and some scraps of
a coat. It could have been us. The Ars Cinema is in ruins too. Why are Russian planes
bombing us like this? Theyre destroying buildings and killing Russians. Those two
 387

A great many partisan brigades were operating in the Crimea. In many brigades, children were fighting side by
side with adults. When partisans were executed, all the local people would be made to attend the execution.
Photo by Mark Redkin/TAss.
 388

Germans were a novelty. There is still a booming noise coming from Sebastopol and the
ground is still shaking. What sort of guns do the Germans have? Its such a terrible din.
1 March. We are in our basement again. On 27 February we had only just gone to
bed and undressed for the first time in three months. Suddenly there was an explosion.
Papa went to the window. There was a ship right opposite our window, firing right at us.
Papa shouted Quick, downstairs. We put our coats on with nothing underneath and ran
out. Mama wanted to go back as wed forgotten our papers, but suddenly there was an
enormous explosion that shook the whole building. We were still upstairs and we were
showered with plaster. We ran down into the shed. There was another explosion. Red
hot shrapnel was raining down on the yard. We sat in the shed all night. In the morning
we went back into the apartment, and the ceiling had gone. Where Mama had been
lying, a huge piece of shrapnel had plunged straight into the mattress. And a huge piece
from the ceiling was lying on Papas pillow. I dont understand how the whole apartment
hadnt burnt down. A shell had gone through the roof and the ceiling and into the stove,
which was lit. We gathered our things again and went off to our basement.
5 March. I have to go out on the seafront to get things, and coal and firewood. Papa
isnt going outside, and nor is Mama. Its more peaceful in the basement. Sometimes
you see people out on the street here.
Yesterday I went out to get coal. I got a whole boxful. I was pulling it along on a cart.
I hadnt got any further than Sanitarnaya Street when one wheel fell off. I couldnt get
it to budge. A Croatian man came along and asked Is it heavy? I said yes, it was. He
helped me get the box home and I introduced him to Papa. He asked why such a young
child was dragging such heavy loads. Papa said that it was important that I got used to
hardship. I needed to be able to do everything, to learn how to cope with difficulties.
After all, things could get even worse for me. The Croatian said Damn this war and left.
Maltsev called in. We had lunch together. Viktor Ivanovich told us he is writing a
book about the GPU1 and about his time in prison and how they knocked his teeth out
and tortured him.
15 March. Its very warm already. Its damp in the basement. Papa wants to get
out of the basement somehow. Recently we shut the damper on the stove too soon,
and almost got carbon monoxide poisoning. Luckily there was a small earth tremor and
Mama woke up from the jolt. The lamp was shaking. We barely managed to crawl out
into the fresh air. It was a cold night. Our neighbour had a little coffee left. So she brewed
some up for us. She wrapped us in blankets. We recovered somehow.
Theres barely anyone left in Yalta. This winter, thirty to forty people were dying
of starvation every day. And were being bombed too. And an awful lot of men were
taken in the round-up. People are saying that 1,100 Jews have been shot. Life is easier

1
Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie State Political Directorate Russian state security organisation from
February to December 1914.
 389

in the buildings where the Germans and Romanians are billeted. They help the other
residents. Some people do laundry for the Germans, others do other work. Now spring
is coming, things are starting to sort themselves out somehow. Papa went to see a doctor
he knows, Vasilevsky. He lives not far from our basement. Half the first floor of their
building is empty. Papa wants to move there. The housing administration is on the same
street. Its hard to believe this is the fourth time weve moved in ten months. Papa made
arrangements and they wrote him out a permit. Were moving in the next few days.
Viktor Ivanovich has come to see us again. Hes written a book and now he wants
to publish it.
Sebastopol is still not surrendering. The Germans are bombing it continually.
10 April. Weve moved house already. Weve moved all our things over from the
seafront. We have two rooms, a covered verandah and a balcony with wisteria and
climbing roses growing all over it. Its pretty. Our building is made of the same stone
as the Vorontsov Palace. The walls are almost a metre thick. Theres a shared kitchen,
but Mama has put a charcoal oven on the balcony and cooks there.
Viktor Ivanovich is not a writer any more; hes now mayor. But hes not happy.
The post isnt important enough for him.
Every time we move, Papa makes improvements. He whitewashes the walls and
fills in any holes. We have good neighbours. Theyre doctors who used to work in
the TB clinic. Sometimes TB patients come to see them, but even though they treat
them, the doctors still dont have enough to eat. Patients have started coming to see
Papa again. Mainly Croats and Romanians. They pay him in food. Papa pays his
technician with food too. He also gives food to his neighbours and friends. All the
same, Id love to have some buckwheat and meat rissoles. The Romanians mainly
bring butter and the Croats bring fish. They have a cat and they catch mullet and
mackerel. Were not going hungry, but I miss milk and cottage cheese. Potatoes have
never grown in Yalta. Id love to have some fried potatoes.
1 May. Were being bombed every day now. Our cat is extraordinary; she can
tell when were about to be bombed, and she takes her kittens down to the ground
floor under the stairs. Were spending more time under the stairs now than on the
first floor. I still go out to see the technician and to the market. I exchange butter and
fish for wheat or bread. The Romanians at the market will exchange anything, even
wine. Yesterday I was coming back along the seafront. A girl was coming behind me.
Suddenly one of our planes came flying in at hedge-hopping height. I saw the pilots
face. He dropped a bomb. There were some Croats standing outside the Intourist
Hotel and they shouted at us to get down. Everything happened as if in slow motion.
This Croat jumped out and tripped me up and I fell to the ground. The bomb exploded
just outside the city park. The girl was killed by shrapnel. The Croat took me home.
I was shaking.
 39 0

The Germans are blasting Sebastopol and our falcons1 are blasting Yalta.
10 May. There are air raids every night. We might as well have stayed in the
basement. Were sleeping under the stairs, anyway just four square metres for us and
our neighbours, Theyre very badly off and very ill. To stop their white underwear from
looking so dirty, theyve dyed it all red and green with streptocide and acrichin. Our
neighbour is joking that hes still wearing the same underwear, but one minute hes green
like a caterpillar, and the next hes hatched out and turned into a butterfly. We eat under
the stairs too. The cat is always with us.
16 May. Viktor Ivanovich came to see us. He offered Mama work as chief
accountant with the city authority. Mama refused. A Jewish woman came to see Papa.
She had refused to wear a star and gone into hiding. Shes asking him to help get her a
new passport. Papa spoke to Maltsev, who promised to help. One of Mamas former
colleagues came to see her too. He asked her to sign a document stating that he has never
been a Communist. Mama signed it. If it wasnt for informers, the Germans wouldnt
even be bothering with the Russians.
I dont have a thing to to wear. The dress I wore in fifth year at school is too small.
Mama gave me her wool coat. Im altering it. But I dont have any summer clothes. I
have an old skirt made from a dress and one blouse. We have to wash with ash. Were
using ash to wash our hair, too. Were saving on soap.
26 May. Its Papas birthday. He used to always celebrate it but now he doesnt.
29 May. Yesterday evening we didnt manage to get under the stairs in time, although
the cat was running about meowing, trying to get us to go down. We were sitting on
the balcony and then went to bed in the living room. Were sleeping altogether in the
living room, like gypsies, although we have three beds in the bedroom. Then there was
a sudden boom. Our troops had fired a torpedo from a submarine. Our lock is jammed.
The windows of half the nearby houses have been shattered, as were so near the sea.
When will it end? Soon the war will have been going on for a year. So many people
have died! And so many more innocent people will die before it is over. The ordinary
Germans dont want to kill people, but theyre being forced to. And what had I or that
girl ever done to anyone? There were only the two of us on the seafront. The pilot saw
us, but he still dropped the bomb and fired at us with a machine gun. And he was a
Soviet pilot.
6 June. I was on the balcony. Some man had come to see Papa. There were planes
flying high in the sky, coming from the direction of Sebastopol. Suddenly I saw something
shining silver. I ran into the living room and shouted Bombs! Papa said Dont talk
nonsense. Then it began. Bombs kept exploding, one after another. I hid under the
table, and Papa put his head under the armchair. His patient disappeared. When it was
over, I ran off to look at the damage. There was an unexploded bomb on the corner of
1
Nickname for Soviet pilots.
 391

War was waged not only on land but also at sea. This photograph shows the battleship Paris Commune during
the fight for Sebastopol. Warships were not the only ones destroyed. On 7 November 1941, Fascist planes
bombed the troop transport Armenia, which was carrying wounded servicemen and evacuees from Yalta. Of
the 5,000 people on board, only eight survived.
TASS.
 392

Litkens Street. I ran up and jumped on top of it. A German grabbed hold of me and
threw me towards the wall and then lay down on top of me. Everyone nearby rushed
off wherever they could and got down flat on the ground. A few seconds later, the bomb
exploded. When I went home, my Papa was standing pressed against the wall, his face
paler than his white coat. When he saw me, he slid down the wall and fainted. My head
was aching, and I started to hiccup.
Towards evening, Papa came to himself and remembered his patient. When I went
to the bathroom, I noticed a pair of legs sticking out from under the bath. Papa managed
to drag the patient out somehow. The plaster of Paris in his mouth had set rock hard. He
couldnt remember how hed managed to get under the bath, and hed ended up stuck
under there. Papa only just managed to take the plaster of Paris out of his mouth. Its a
wonder he didnt suffocate.
15 June. No news, and nothing good to report. An old acquaintance of Papas, a
Jewish woman, came and asked him to help her get a Bulgarian passport. Papa promised
to help.
The bombing is still going on. There are dead bodies in the ruins and masses of rats.
Our cat, Murka, is bringing in about ten a day. Each time she brings one in I have to get
up and stroke her; if I dont, shell put it on my pillow. In the morning I throw the rats
into the police station yard. The policeman there shouts at me Why the hell do you keep
throwing rats in here. Recently, his car was stolen in the night. How did they manage to
get the car over the wall?
26 June. Theyre starting to bomb us even more heavily. And the earth is shaking
from all the bombing in Sebastopol. People are saying the Germans have made a mistake
and given the Romanians a hammering. Papa asked Viktor Ivanovich to help him get his
friend a new passport. Shes a Bulgarian now. And were still sleeping under the stairs,
all five of us.
5 July. Sebastopol has surrendered. Viktor Ivanovich came to see us. He is indignant
at the cowardly conduct of the commanders. They left on a submarine, while the soldiers
held out till the end on the ruins of Khersones. The sailors didnt surrender. People say
they joined hands and jumped off the cliff into the sea. Thousands of soldiers have been
taken prisoner.
8 July. Apparently, prisoners of war are being marched into Simferopol. When the
head of the column was at Bakhchisaray, the tail end was still in Sebastopol. Theyre
letting Ukrainians go home. A sailor who had managed to get away somehow came to see
Papa. Papa gave him his suit. The man was a Ukrainian, and he said that the Ukrainians
are going back home to the Ukraine. So why are the Russians being sent off to camps?
And why are the Russian planes bombing us so ruthlessly?
16 July. Its my birthday again. I turned fifteen today. Its hot. Nobody has said
Happy Birthday to me. I decided to go to have a swim. After all, we are only 100 metres
 393

from the sea. I didnt tell Mama, and went out. At Oreanda, I went down to the sea.
There was nobody about. The Germans were a long way away. I got undressed. Then
I noticed them shouting and waving at me. I thought they didnt want me to swim,
because I was Russian. But when I dived in and swam a little way out, I realised the sea
was mined. A mine was floating under me. It was round, with horns sticking out. I swam
back. An Italian started to put a boat out, but I got to the shore more quickly under my
own steam. I grabbed my dress and rushed home. Nobody ran after me. I didnt say
anything. I wetted my hair in the bathroom. Im always getting into trouble of some sort
or another.
1 August. Today Murka crawled in with a big old white rat it had sunk its teeth into
her throat, but she wouldnt let go of it. Papa tore the rat away and blood came gushing
out. Papa treated her wound. Now shes lying down with her kittens.
9 August. No news. Were still living under the stairs. The cat is still going downstairs
with her kittens. Theyre funny, they go tumbling down the stairs; they cant walk
properly yet. I go out to the technician. There are lots of Germans in town, taking a
break. There are fewer Romanians now. Yesterday, when I went out to the market, I
saw an old man whod been tied to a whipping post in the town park. He had a placard
on his chest with the word Informer written on it. There was a crowd of people around
him, spitting at him, throwing stones and yelling at him. The mayor has sentenced
him to two weeks of punishment. Hes taken away in the evenings and tied up again in
the morning. Theyve stopped rounding people up. They probably have nobody left to
catch. All the same, Papa is staying inside. As for Mama, even before the war, she only
ever went out to work. It was the same in Sebastopol and Yalta. And anyway, she has
nowhere to go now.
25 August. I thought Id be going back to school, but now who knows when Ill get
back to my studies? Im not even sure I will go back. Today I would have been starting
the 8th year. Im dying of boredom. Its a good thing we have so many books. I dont
have any friends here. A Romanian has been coming to Papa to have some false teeth
made. Recently, he took it into his head to serenade me under the balcony. He brought
flowers. I tipped a bucket of water over him.
5 September. Viktor Ivanovich has found a new wife. Shes called Nelly. Shes
young, a doctor. Why does she want to be with an old man? He is leaving the town
administration. Hes been asked to join some Russian army organised by the Germans.
He needs to go somewhere in Germany. He came to say goodbye. He was very upset and
unsure about everything. But hes still planning to save Russia.
30 September. Uncle Valya came again. He says we should move to Simferopol
so we can all be together. We need a residency permit. He has promised to go to the
commandant in Simferopol. Papa agrees. Uncle Valya told us that everythings
completely different in Simferopol. The schools, theatres and cinemas are working, you
 394

can buy whatever you need at the market and there are no air raids. But here were being
bombed constantly. Its cold sleeping under the stairs.
5 October. Yesterday, our neighbours didnt want to go down into the basement.
They went to bed in the apartment. We went down below the stairs. The cat was meowing
like anything. Then Papa went up to try to persuade our neighbours to come down. They
were just on their way down when there was a great explosion from the sea a shell.
Our house is made of diorite, and it shook. In the morning, we went to have a look. The
cupboard that was in the corner had gone. All our things are in tatters. Half the wall has
gone and the nose of the shell had gone into the stove next to our wall. Otherwise our
bedroom would have been completely destroyed.
19 October. Papa has finally decided to leave everything and go. I wonder how it will
work out. After all, were at war. There are enemies on all sides.
A gypsy woman comes to visit and Mama swaps things with her for food. Yesterday,
she brought a piece of meat that looked like dog. Ive already seen cat our neighbours
have given me some; it was like rabbit. This meat was blue and scraggy, with more bones.
25 October. Were sleeping at home, next to the door. We sit until midnight, waiting
to be bombed, and then go to bed all huddled up together, like gypsies. Its colder. The
school is open, but nobodys going. Probably theres nobody left, and anyone who is left
is afraid. It feels as if this war has been going on for ever. I cant remember anything else.
7 November. The bombing was particularly bad last night. It was a special occasion1.
Papa has work, but money wont buy anything any more. The Romanians arent coming
any more and the Croatians arent going out to sea. We dont have fish or any preserves
or tinned goods. Im feeling the lack of food and Papa is in very low spirits. You couldnt
say were starving, like we were in 1941. We still have some flour and saccharine, and
some preserved goods left over from summer. We have to be frugal. Mama is using ash to
do the laundry. We only use soap to wash ourselves.
I go out to see the technician and to the market. Its horrible these days to walk
along the seafront. The sea is rough and the spray reaches the houses. The sea is grey,
dirty and cold. Before the war it sparkled, and at night you could see a path of moonlight
stretching out over the dark, still sea, broader at the horizon and narrower at the shore.
And the moon looked so peaceful. All that has gone.
15 November. They brought us our pass. Mama went to the commandants office in
Yalta. The commandant signed it. So thats that. Were leaving soon. A German nurse
came to see us. She is going to take the apartment after weve gone. She spotted our
chairs with the carved backs and asked for one of them. She told us she could get us a
truck for our luggage. Shes going to send the chair to her father in Germany. It was odd.
She could just have taken it.
20 November. Were packing to leave. Our cat keeps running about and climbing
1
The anniversary of the October Revolution is celebrated on 7 November.
 395

into our suitcases. In the morning she crawls out and looks at us. Shes afraid well leave
her behind. Mama would never do such a rotten thing.
22 November. Sister Charlotta got the truck for us. We loaded our things on board
but it was evening already. We couldnt set off. Papa went down to sleep in the truck
27 November. Ill write everything as it happened. Charlotta got another truck for
us and we spent the morning loading it up. But we didnt have any drivers. Or rather,
we only had one German. I went ahead in the first truck with the German and the cat.
Charlotta had told the German that hed catch it if anything happened to me. We set off
at about midday. It got dark early, up in the mountains. We drove into a Tatar village to
stay the night. I slept in the womens quarters with the cat and the German went into
the mens quarters. They fed me and Murka and made up a bed for us on the floor. In
the night, Murka asked to go out. I went out with her. It was cold outside and the sky
was full of stars. It seemed quite light with the starlight. I didnt want to go. Then I heard
people talking. I got a fright, and went back in to bed. Murka came in after me. Early in
the morning, the German came to get me. They gave us breakfast and we left. The road
began to go downhill, and there were no more steep bends. At around nine we drove
into Simferopol. There were a lot of people on the streets, especially a lot of Polizei. We
didnt see so many in Yalta. The Polizei are in black uniforms with grey collars. We drove
up to the house where Aunt Anya and Jean lived. The German, Jean and the neighbours
helped to unload our things, and then the German left.
The next day, Mama and Papa arrived in two trucks, with the same German and a
Russian driver. They unloaded everything and we got things set up, more or less. Were
not being bombed here.
29 November. In the morning I went out to have a look at the town. Id only just gone
round the corner when I ran into Vinko. I was astonished, and he was even more so. He
was in a hurry and didnt tell me anything. Hes a sailor, so its odd that hes not at sea.
And he was meant to be joining the partisans in Yugoslavia, but hes still here.
12 December. Im going to school already. There are sixty of us in the class. All girls.
All the boys are at another school. Im in the seventh class again. Ive made friends with
some of the other girls: Lilka Izmailova, a Tatar, and Lilya Alyanaki, an Armenian.
Lyusya Kun is considered a German but shes actually a Ukrainian. Her step-father is a
German and he has registered her and her mother as German citizens.
Papa has found his feet quickly. He found a school for me straight away and then
went off to get a job at the regional clinic. In Yalta he was afraid of everything, but now
hes calm.
15 December. Im going to school. Theres no need to be afraid of bombs here, and
there are lots of people on the streets. Our history teacher is an old man who always
has a drip hanging off the end of his nose. We call him: Dewdrop. Our maths teacher
is like the teachers in the old prep schools: big and stout and very proud, in an ancient
 39 6

uniform. The Russian teacher is from Leningrad. She came here in 1941 and got stuck
here. Were studying French, German and early Russian literature. At the moment,
were doing Stendhal. In German were learning about the life of Hitler. It turns out that
Hitler is a nickname, like Stalin. His real name is Shicklgruber.
There are lots of Germans from Stalingrad in the city. My friend from Sebastopol
is working in a German army hospital. There are lots of wounded there, and patients
suffering from burns. Her father was in Sebastopol during the fighting. He was working
in a bank and couldnt leave all the documents and money. Later, he sent his family off
to Simferopol, while he stayed in Sebastopol. He told stories about what life was like
there. People were hiding in caves and catacombs. There was food but no water. In the
Inkerman caves they used champagne for drinking and washing. It was impossible to go
outside. Sailors brought supplies in to them. The sailors had all been taken off their ships
and sent to the trenches. The Germans were afraid of the sailors. They had a name for
them: black death.
24 December. The Germans are celebrating a festival. There are lots of Germans
in our yard. Theyre all singing and rejoicing and coming out into the yard to let off
their guns. There is only one lavatory in the yard for everyone all the residents and
the Germans. The Germans dont understand how its possible not to have an indoor
lavatory. We have to brave the bullets when we run out.
I went to see Lyusya. Her stepfather is apparently a German, but she is a Ukrainian
through and through. Still, she counts as a German. They have lots of Germans in their
yard. The Germans come to see them, too, just to visit. Theyve given one of them the
nickname Tchaikovsky because he plays the mouth organ. And theres a very young
one, too, called Harry. Hes from a wealthy family. He doesnt want to fight. He wants
to work in the army hospital, so he doesnt get sent to the front. And theres another
German ,who isnt like a German at all. He speaks perfect Russian, better than some
Russians. He has a snub nose and piggy little eyes. He tells strange stories of how he used
to cross the border before the war, and walk through the Russian countryside dressed in
rags, without any problems, and how then he went back to the Germans. But what about
our border guards? Didnt they stop defectors? He wasnt the only one, after all. Maybe
hes actually a Russian who went over to the Germans?
Ive seen so many things this year and learnt so much. Why are we at war? The
Germans dont want to die, and nor do our soldiers. Why so many victims? Why this
hunger, cold, all these executions? Weve left our apartment and now were living in a
barrack. Everything is destroyed. Our own troops have blasted Yalta, the most beautiful
city, to pieces, and theyve torn our hearts to pieces, too. Why did that Soviet pilot want
to kill me on the seafront? Ive never done anything to harm anyone. And Papa has only
ever helped people. And Mama is the most honest person you could find. When I was
small, I used to love to go to the confectioners, where they would always have the most
 397

beautiful cakes. You could smell them through the whole district. The confectioners
was a Voentorg1 shop and Mama was the head accountant. When Mama found out I
was going there just about every day to treat myself, she immediately covered the cost of
anything I might have eaten.
Im not showing this diary to anybody. Not even my Mama.
31 December. My parents have gone off to see in the New Year with Uncle Valya.
Jean and I are in our rooms. Were speaking to one another through the door. Theyve
locked us in. The Germans are celebrating New Year, and Mama and Auntie Anya are
afraid somebody might come in to us. Especially after what happened in Yalta, when
that drunk German wanted to shoot me. The carbide lamps smell terrible, but at least
they give off much more light than oil lamps. That was all we had when we had to sit
under the stairs in Yalta. And all in all, things are completely different here. The shops
are working, and we can get bread, grain and even some jam with our ration cards.
Theres a canteen serving free food. You can eat there and take food home. Usually they
serve soup with millet, sprats and a piece of bread. Sometimes they have boiled beetroot
with oil and vinegar. Theres also a private shop. The shopkeeper travels to and fro to
Romania and Germany. The shop sells beautiful brooches, rings, stockings and linen.
Its very expensive. Mama says Theres no need to buy all sorts of rubbish.
Papas working in the local medical centre. He doesnt get paid very much but he
gets some private patients, too. For the moment we cant buy anything, but were not
going hungry. We brought some supplies with us from Yalta. Were eating wheat porridge
and bean soup. Theres a stove in our room and Mama cooks there.
Uncle Valya gave us some honey. He has a bee-garden. He had loads of honey but
he hid it from the Germans in his grandmothers garden. But his neighbours informed
on him, so the Germans came and dug up the honey, and took away two tons. They gave
him a receipt, saying they had requisitioned it for the army. Now hes waiting for the new
batch. In Yalta we drank our tea with saccharine. Saccharine is disgusting it leaves a
taste like metal in your mouth.
1943
10 January. In school we were given special passes so that we can go to the cinema
for free. The German films are so interesting. Ive already seen two. Koza Tedri and The
Indian Tomb2. They sell photos of the German film stars in the cinema for five roubles
each. The photos are smashing. I cant believe the dresses! Ive never seen anything like
them. Theres one of an actress in slacks and a sweater. Thats what Id like. I used to
run around in short trousers until I was ten; I was always climbing trees and fighting with
the boys and constantly falling over, scraping myself or almost drowning. We had a huge
yard. We never used to play in the end yard. The big yard was the one in the middle. We

1
A special shop for military personnel.
2
A German silent film of 1921, directed by Joe May.
 398

played churki palki there, and hide-and-seek. There was a garden too. There was a stage
there, and benches, and masses of flowers. And there was a swing and a huge mulberry
tree. I used to jump off it all the time. In the middle yard there were some ruins from
the earthquake1. We made a den there and played mothers and fathers. We also liked to
play right at the bottom next to the sheds. Sometimes wed find old coins and precious
stones there. I once found a beautiful turquoise-coloured stone. Then I swapped it for
a piece of glass and some lilac leaves. Mama told me off about it. It all seems so long
ago now, like a dream. Now you never see any children outside in the yards. Nobody
plays anywhere. In Yalta you could go out on the street and not meet a soul. But here on
Pushkin Street there are lots of people. You see Russians and Germans out walking, and
girls out walking with Germans. The officers dont go out, they sit in the casinos. And
there are people in some of the other streets too. The old people sit outside their gates.
Weve heard that when the Germans took Sebastopol they harnessed up captive sailors
like horses, and forced them to pull drunken German scum along in tramcars.
21 January. Papa went to the housing administration and bribed somebody. Now
theyre trying to find him an apartment. There are lots of apartments, but lots of
Germans, too. After Stalingrad there are lots of them in the army hospitals and on leave.
I dont feel like writing. Theres no time to write and nothing to write about. I go to
school in the morning and then go to the cinema. In the evening, I mill wheat in the
coffee grinder and then go to see Olga or Lyusya. We play cards or we play on the piano.
We live on the same street so the curfew isnt a problem. If there are soldiers visiting, they
see us home. The other day, Tchaikovsky showed us a caricature: a piece of paper with a
picture of a pig in each corner and the words Whos the biggest swine? When you folded
the paper up, you got a portrait of Churchill. Is it really true that a lot of the Germans
dont like Hitler and just want to go home? We were told they were all murderers and
looters. There were posters with pictures of Germans with horns. But these Germans
laugh and talk about how lovely Germany is, and how terrible it is at the front. Why do
they tell lies at school?
12 February. It looks as if well be moving soon. Papa has been given a permit for an
apartment in a house for professionals. He gave the housing manager a piece of material
from the supplies he had for making up military uniforms. A German officer has also
been given permission to move into the apartment, but hes serving in the Romanian
army. Papa and the German have both put padlocks on their door. Uncle Valyas wife
spoke to the German and pointed out that he was going away, while they were here for
good. But the German told her The dentist has a lot of money He hides it under the
mattress. Thats why they gave him a permit.
14 February. Mama went to see the commandant. She spoke to him in French and
he signed the permit.
1
A major earthquake took place in 1927 in Yalta.
 39 9

25 February. Weve already moved. Papa has a surgery now. Weve put two beds in
the bedroom and a divan for me. And theres a dining room. Theres a parquet floor,
but the Germans who were living here before us painted it with something black- shoe
polish, I think. No matter how much I scrub at it I cant get rid of it. Its cold in the
apartment. It used to have central heating, but now its not working. I come back
from school and I cant get warm.
Almost all the people living in the building are Germans: generals and officers.
There is a professor Belsky on our floor, an eye doctor. His sons a surgeon. They
work in the district hospital. There are Polizei upstairs. On the ground floor theres
an artist, Samokish. Aivazovskys wife lives with him too, and the curators of the
Aivazovsky museum in Feodosia, the Brizgals. Whenever Im on my way to school
or coming back they always poke their heads out of the door and then bang it shut
straight away. What do they want? Samokish has his studio in the building next door.
They have a German a major living in one of their rooms, too. And a cat and a
parrot. The parrot talks, and understands everything you say.
1 March. In the morning, when Im on my way to school, the Generals orderly
says hello, and tells me the days password. Ive been to the theatre twice. Actors
fly in from all over the world. There are some Russian shows, too. Ive been to La
Petite Chocolatire and a review from Paris. It was marvellous. The costumes were
smashing. There are two doors in the theatre foyer: one is the entrance for Germans,
the other for Russians.
I have some new friends here, Tamara and Rita. Theyre good looking, and Im
not. And Im badly dressed. I have the rough wool coat I used to wear in the 5th year.
Its already too short and too tight. Apart from that, I have a skirt made out of an old
dress. Mama says, When you grow up, you can wear what you like.
Papa has started to earn good money. Mama is going to the market. You can buy
everything there. A white round loaf of bread costs 800 roubles and butter is 1,000
roubles. Mama is even buying meat. Not dog meat or goat, either.
12 March. Its boring in school. There are around seventy people in the class. All
girls. Its warm today. I dont feel like studying. In the history lesson Dewdrop was
taking the register and we were all jumping out of the window, one at a time. When he
came to my name, he looked up. There were only five of us left. But all the same, we
all ran off at once. I got a row at home for being cheeky to a teacher.
20 March. Viktor Ivanovich has suddenly appeared, wearing a German uniform.
Hes come from somewhere up north. Papa was not at all happy to see him. Viktor
Ivanovich was also uncomfortable. He said that after hed given his book to the
publishers, he was invited to meet some other Russian officers. Theyre forming a
Russian Liberation Army in order to try to build a new Russia after the war. He says
that he had no choice. He was talking in his usual patronising manner. Papa cant
 40 0

stand it. Papa has lots of new friends. They come to play preferans1 in the evenings.
Mama doesnt play. The chief doctor of the Crimea, Radzilovsky, comes to see Papa.
They have some business together.
15 April. Spring is here. Its warm. Its warmer in the apartment. The leaves are
appearing on the trees. The war is still going on out there somewhere. People are
dying. Weve heard terrible stories about the German concentration camps, about
Auschwitz. People are being brought in there by train from all over the place, and
exterminated in gas chambers. Its horrific! Why are they doing it? Why are people
killing other people?
1 May. We used to celebrate the first of May, but now all days are the same. Ive
been registered at the labour exchange. Theyve registered me as unemployed. When
Ive finished school, they may take me to work in Germany. Im not sixteen yet. Thats
why they wont take me yet. Mama has gone to work at the clinic as apprentice to a
technician. Simply in order to register herself as employed.
Papa has begun to drink. He cant stand the Germans, although theyre quite
different now. Nobodys putting any pressure on us at home. The Germans greet us
like good neighbours. Papa is walking about in his naval uniform jacket. Mama has just
covered the buttons with dark blue material. To be fair, he doesnt have anything else:
he gave away his suits to sailors who had escaped after being held captive. Now theres
nobody who can make up a suit for him, and he has no material he could use anyway. He
didnt think of it before. He was expecting the Germans to be driven out at any minute.
The war has been going on for almost two years. The Germans advanced very
quickly, but now theyre retreating very slowly. There are still lots of Germans and
Romanians in town. The Germans have taken over the centre and the Romanians are
out in the suburbs. The Germans treat the Romanians with contempt. The Romanians
hate the Germans too, but they act like thugs in order to try to impress the Germans. The
siguranta2 are worse than the Gestapo. And the Romanian soldiers steal from people.
The Germans dont go round the houses or take anything.
20 May. School has broken up. Theres nothing to do. I go to the cinema every
day, and to the theatre every other day. Theyre always changing the programme. In the
evenings we often gather at Lyusya or Olgas house. Papa wont let me have my friends
to visit. He always has people over, drinking together and whispering. Papa has put up
a notice on the front door; hes treating private patients at home. Mama is annoyed, as
she has to tidy up all the time, and because Papa is using the money for something, and
she doesnt know what.
16 June. Yesterday we were sent to pick roses at the plantation. We were paid twenty
marks for a kilo of petals. I earned fifty marks for the whole day.

1
A card game popular in Russia, similar to whist.
2
Romanian secret police.
 401

For eight months, marines, coast defence artillery and local inhabitants held Sebastopol against assault from a
200,000-strong Fascist strike force.
A. Brodskiy/TASS.
 402

In the evening Viktor Ivanovich came. He gave me his book: In the Torture Chambers
of the GPU. Inside, he had written Zoya, in this life there will be roses, like the ones
you picked today on the plantation, but there will be thorns: thorns that can pierce the
human body and soul. Viktor Ivanovich says that he has never met more honest people
than my parents. Hes staying in a hotel used by officers. He wears a German summer
uniform. Today, he was wearing khaki shorts and a shirt. Its strange to see a former
colonel wearing shorts, so you can see the grey hairs on his legs.
25 June. I read Maltsevs book. Its horrifying. How is the GPU any different from
the Gestapo? The GPU are even worse after all they torture their own people. Even
what happened to Viktor Ivanovich, when they knocked out his teeth, is nothing when
you hear about how they tortured women; or doused people in water and left them out
in the freezing cold; or left them almost naked in metal containers in the heat, or in a
bitter frost in winter, so that they had to pace about on red-hot or freezing cold metal.
Many people didnt survive. Pregnant women were left at the mercy of louts of guards,
who would torture them to death. How can anyone survive that sort of thing? How could
Stalin have allowed such terrible concentration camps to exist? And we all thought that
our country was the best in the world. If Id been sent to prison I would have hanged
myself straight away.
16 July. Today was my birthday. Papa gave me a watch and Mama made me a cake.
I didnt have any guests. Why do we never celebrate my birthday?
Mama invited a dressmaker to come over. At last Im having a coat made from the
cloth for Papas uniforms, a few dresses made from Mamas old dresses and two new
dresses made of white material, and a light blue silk one. Mama has told me a hundred
times that I need to look after it. I dont even want to look at it, let alone put it on. Why
is my mother so strict?
Papa is drinking. The men who drink with him laugh at him. And my parents
friends are criticising them, saying that Im like Cinderella. I have nothing to wear, I do
everything around the house and Im always being told off all the same. Papa is earning
a lot, but he never gives me anything. Its a good thing I have a pass for the cinema. Id
like to get a job, but Papa wont let me.
Lyuska is working in a German shop and Lilka in a chemist. Olga is working at the
army hospital. Lilka brings medicines and I sell them to Papa. He doesnt know that
Lilka and I are sharing out the money. Then he shouts at me, Where are you getting
money from? Lyuska tells us we can take something from the shop now and again. I
hope they dont catch us: wed be hanged on the spot. Though I dont care. Nobody
cares about me anyway
5 September I was summoned to the commission. They are taking girls to
Germany. Lyusya has a German living in her apartment. We were all crying and he
was trying to comfort us. Theyre not taking Lyuska as she is officially a German. But
 403

Lilka and I have to go. Uncle Hans said that hell give us the address and we can go
to his wife.
8 September. Yesterday I was at the commission. First, we were examined by Russian
doctors. Papa had had a word with a doctor he knows, who managed to get me put into
group 3, for agricultural work. Some of the girls were filthy, in dirty dresses. They were
put into groups 1 and 2. Theyll be sent to work in underground factories, mines and
chemical works. The girls in group 3 had to be interviewed by a committee of Germans.
I went along. There were three Germans sitting at a desk all doctors. The one in the
middle, who was pink and bald, with blue eyes, asked me to show him my hands. And I
had a manicure.
He asked me, What can you do? I told him I played the piano. And what do you
play? he asked. I like Strauss best of all, I said. He asked me what my father did, and I
told him he was a dentist.
He took my papers, crossed out what was written there and wrote group 5. That
means Im free. He also asked me how I knew German. I told him that I used to have a
German governess. Then he wished me success, and I left. Olga and Lilya have jobs, so
theyre not in danger of being sent to Germany. But I was lucky.
6 October. Maltsevs latest wife came and asked me to go with her to the Gestapo.
Viktor Ivanovich is in Loetzen. He is already chief of staff of the air force of the Russian
Liberation Army. She wants to go and join him. She doesnt know a word of German
and wanted me to help her get a pass. I went there with her. The gate was open and there
was a sleepy-looking sentry was guard. I told him wed come to get a pass. He waved
us through and we went in. In one of the rooms, we spotted two Germans lying down.
There was a table with food there, too. I told them what we wanted. One of them stood
up, took Nellys paper, signed it and stamped it. Then we left. I didnt say anything to
Mama.
31 October. Its warm outside. Weve been expecting our troops to come into town
but theyve gone straight past to Odessa. Its started to smell like autumn. Its hard to
believe the war is still going on somewhere. I remember how two years ago, when the
German army was on the offensive, it was cold and dull, but now were dressed in summer
clothes. Were in besieged Crimea. The Germans are anticipating some new weapon.
10 November. Papa was called to the Gestapo. Hes been saving people from the
concentration camps we had no idea. Prisoners from the camps would be brought
to him in his surgery and he would dress them in different clothes. Other people would
go off to the camp in their place, dressed in rags with their faces bandaged up. Three
of the people hes saved are doctors. Theyre already working in his clinic. Somebody
smelt a rat, but Papa said he knew nothing about it, and that the guard should sit next to
the dentists chair instead of out in the corridor. They let Papa go, but hes still helping
people. Hes giving a lot of money to somebody. Radzilovsky often comes to visit. They
 404

two of them drink together. Radzilovsky is always upset, grumbling to Papa and drinking.
A few days ago he slept on the floor of our balcony.
25 December. Its Christmas. Papa seems happier. His friends are here. Papa got
very drunk and began to dance and stamp his feet. The generals aide-de-camp came
and asked him not to stamp, as the general was resting. Papa told him, Im a major, and
I want to celebrate like a true Russian. A little later, the aide-de-camp came back again
to ask Papa not to stamp so loudly. This time, Papa told him Im a lieutenant colonel.
Then the general himself came. Papa, who was quite drunk by this time, said to him,
Im a colonel. The general looked at him and said And I suppose after the next drink,
the doctor will be a general. Then he left.
1944
1 January. We went out for New Year. I went to see Lilya, and Mama and Papa
went to Uncle Valya. We came back this morning, and found a lot of used matches next
to our door. The generals aide-de-camp came and said wed flooded them. We still
hadnt opened the door. We went downstairs to have a look. Water had gone through
to the ground floor. Then the Germans came upstairs behind us. Our hall was ankle-
deep in water and the cat was running around in it. She has a habit of bathing, and she
had turned on the tap in the kitchen and was enjoying herself. The general stood there
staring. Then he said. These Russians even their cats are crazy.
7 January. Yesterday was Mamas birthday. Uncle Valya came with his wife and with
a Romanian, her lover, who lives in their apartment, and a German who lives with
Grandma. She passed on a greeting and a present with him. Pyotr Leshchenko, who
served in the Civil War with Mamas favourite brother, was a friend of Mamas back
then. As usual, Radzilovsky just happened to call by with his wife. He didnt know
about the birthday. Leshchenko sang us some songs. Hes a major in the Romanian army
now. Hes short and balding, but he has a wonderful voice. He is in very low spirits. He
told Mama that he takes a dim view of things. Although he has a young wife, he finds no
joy in life. Hes lived in exile so many years; but he hopes at least he will end his life in
Russia. He has a very bad feeling about the future
27 March. Viktor Ivanovich appeared, wearing epaulettes now and looking very
tall and haughty. He thanked me for helping Nelly. He had flown in from Loetzen,
taking a complicated route through Romania. He told us that Soviet troops would
be in Yalta soon. He told me, Never desert your motherland. And he said to Papa,
The Germans have sold us down the river. Were just cannon fodder. They want
someone else to do their dirty work. But theres no way out now. We have to finish
what weve started. He says that the Germans are waiting for a miracle weapon that
will change the whole outcome of the war. But nobody knows what it is. He had
to go and give a lecture somewhere, though he said it was just routine. Hes very
unhappy with his lot.
 405

8 April. Today was Easter. We all met up at Grandmas house. The Germans
stationed at Krasnaya Gorka are preparing to evacuate.
9 April. We were bombed in the night. A bomb exploded under my window. I was
showered with glass. Mama had got up and was trying to get me to come down to the
bomb shelter, but I said to her, Its just the wind and fell asleep again. Papa was drunk
and didnt hear anything.
11 April. Last night we went down into the cellar. There were lots of Germans there.
There was more bombing. Chechens and Ingush from hit squads are running about on
the streets1. The Germans are afraid of them too. They tried to get into our cellar, but
the Germans chased them away. They hung some packages on the post. The Germans
blew them up. And they set fire to the shed, but we put it out
13 April. Last night passed without any trouble. There isnt a soul on the streets.
Mama sent me out to find out what had happened to her beloved sister. I would have
to walk about a kilometre to Karl Liebknecht Street. I set off. There was nobody about.
There were documents all over the street. The buildings are still undamaged, despite the
bombs and the death squads. On Karl Marx Street, an open car carrying some officers
suddenly appeared from nowhere, with soldiers armed with machine-guns standing at
the sides. It came rushing round the corner into our street, and they shouted, Wheres
the Sebastopol road? I waved them in the right direction and they sped off. That was my
last encounter with the Germans. I went to see my aunt. An hour later I came out and
the streets were full of Russian soldiers. One of them said something about my mother,
but I didnt understand. On Tolstoy Street I saw a poster for a film called Let George
Do It!2 and decided to go and see it. It was very long, with lots of intermissions. I got a
terrible row when I got back.
15 April. The streets are full of Soviet soldiers and officers. Theyre in epaulettes now.
And lots of people wearing red ribbons. Partisans, apparently. The head teacher of our
school has a ribbon too.
20 April. We were taken out of school and sent to a hospital, to care for wounded
people. Theyre coming in from Sebastopol. Most of them are from other nationalities.
The hospital is in a sort of barrack. The wounded are lying on straw on the floor. Its
filthy and it stinks.
26 April. There is a major from Moscow living in our apartment. Hes from a planning
bureau. Work on rebuilding Sebastopol will start as soon as Soviet troops take the city.
Everythings already in place. There is terrible fighting there. Papa is terribly upset. He
is a staunch defender of Sebastopol and the sailors. After all, he was a sailor from 1913

1
Many Chechen and Ingush soldiers served in the Red Army. Their allegiance in WWII was a little unclear; an
insurrection was organised by Chechens and Ingush at the beginning of the war, hoping for independence from the
Soviet Union, and The Germans made efforts to recruit them. After the war, in Operation Lentil, Stalin had them
deported en masse from the Caucasus on the pretext that they had collaborated with the Germans.
2
A film of 1940 starring George Formby (Russian title George from Dinky-Jazz).
 40 6

onwards. Although he studied to be a dentist in Reval1, after that he served as medical

officer on ships, submarines and at a naval hospital, until he had to retire in 1938. A huge
number of sailors have been transferred to Sebastopol. Some drunkard of an investigator
advised Papa to leave. But that was all. They didnt touch him after that; hes no longer
an enemy.
10 May. Sebastopol has been taken. Our major left today. At last its all over. Life
is almost back to normal. But there is no food at the market. Papa has lots of patients,
mainly servicemen. They bring him food and German chocolate, which is probably
stolen from goods depots.
19 May. There was chaos last night. Shouting, screaming and shooting. We went
out on the balcony. People in military uniform were dragging and pushing our new
neighbours, Tatars, onto a truck. They were in the Crimean government before the war.
They only arrived here a few days ago. In the morning I ran to see Rita. Her family
has been taken away too. The apartment is open and their things were lying around
everywhere. I wanted to get my sheet music, but couldnt find it and ran away quickly. It
turns out that they rounded up all the Tatars last night and deported them. Ritas father
was a partisan. Why have they been deported?2
24 May. Papa was called to the prosecutors office. The prosecutor is demanding
that we vacate our apartment. Were being offered a place on Gogol Street four rooms
on the ground floor and an outdoor lavatory. Papa refused to take it.
1 June. Papa and Mama were called in again on 26 May. I havent seen them since.
Theyre in prison. Our house was searched for two days. The investigator, who was a
woman, kept slipping things under her jacket: stockings, Mamas blouses. They wrote
everything down. I was driven out. I managed to take some food and a few dresses over to
Auntie Anya. I was given a metal bed, a blanket and a winter coat. They took everything
else. The prosecutor has taken the apartment.
15 June. Every day I take packages to the prison. I sit there for days on end. Theyve
arrested Uncle Valya.
16 June. My aunt has thrown me out of her house. She said I was the daughter of
convicts. Ive come to live with Grandma for the time being.
27 June. Last night some NKVD officers came. They gave my grandparents twenty
minutes to pack their things. They were deported. My grandfather, who is Bulgarian,
is eighty-four years old, and my grandmother is seventy-six. They couldnt manage to
climb into the truck themselves, so they were thrown in like sacks.

1
Tallin in Estonia was formerly known as Reval.
2
In May 1944, by order of Stalin, all Crimean Tatars were arrested and forcibly deported en masse to other areas of the
Soviet Union, mainly Uzbekistan, accused of collaboration with the Axis powers. In fact, many Tatars had fought with
the Red Army and the partisans.
 408

Volodya Borisenkos parents knew about the diary their 13-year-old son during their
time in German-occupied Crimea. But even Vladimir Fyodorovich (Volodya) himself
couldnt remember where the dairy was. Did it get left behind in Feodosia or was it lost? It
was only after his death in 1986 when his daughter Marina was going through his papers that
she came across these autobiographical notes briefly listing the events described in his diary:
Up to December1943 I lived in fear of a raid on the house and deportation to Germany,
but in December, threatened with being shot I was forced to sign up at the labour office, and
from there on 4 December I was sent to work at a power station as a manual labourer. When
I was in Inkerman, a suburb of Sebastopol, I managed to escape into the woods with three
friends during a Russian air attack.
After the Crimea was liberated Volodya returned home and to school. When the war was
over he entered the Leningrad Physical Culture Institute. He triumphed at a good half of
the worlds swimming pools and joined the USSRs sporting elite, Marina told me. He was
at every Olympic Games, first as a participant and later as a trainer and an international
judge.
Who taught you to swim? they asked Volodya in surprise when he came to Leningrad.
The sea, he replied. The sea whose salt air he had breathed since childhood, the sea from
which he gathered mussels to feed his family throughout the war, the sea in which with his
own eyes he had seen a ship go down with its passengers Volodyas diary begins at that
point.
 40 9

January 1942 In November 1941 the Germans broke into Feodosia. We

had no chance to evacuate, first because of Fathers illness and second because
my brother Anatol was only 4 years old and my sister Dina wasnt even a year old.
Apart from that, ships leaving the port were promptly sunk by German aircraft. Two
months after the Germans had invaded our navy carried out a landing at Feodosia,,
and this lasted three weeks until on 21 January the Germans retook the town
So anyway, today I decided to start my diary. I am very sorry I did not begin it
earlier. Although in fact I couldnt have written down all the horrors I witnessed,
and besides I will never forget them. For example, today Father and I came out of
our gate and saw a huge column of smoke and flames. It was a 3-storey building
opposite Soyuztrans. The whole town is nothing but skeletons of buildings, craters
and ruins. All the finest parts of the town have been smashed and mangled. The
station, the Astoria, the hydrotechnical school, School 1, School 6, a huge tobacco
factory, the city park, the swimming pool, the market, many bakeries, all of
Italyanskaya Street has burnt down and the whole port. Apart from that hundreds
of small houses have been destroyed. All the water mains are smashed and the town
is drinking water from basements, bomb craters, manholes and limestone springs.
There is too much to describe.
Father and I went to fetch water from a limestone spring. Germans were
walking about everywhere, the street was littered with spent cartridges and grenades
and shrapnel from bombs and shells, including some complete unexploded shells.
People were walking around a ruined shop collecting planks. At the square where
the limestone spring was there were three new two-storey buildings, one of which
had already been destroyed. Nearby an ammunition store that had been set up in
the old childrens home was burning. There was a dead body lying near an air-raid
shelter that had been blown up. The square was littered with unexploded shells and
small bombs. We got our water and went home.
Belosevich came for Father and said the Germans had ordered the bakery to
be repaired in one day and baking bread the following day. I went too. My father
is a glazier, a metalworker, a baker, a roofer and a welder and also has many other
skills. When we arrived at the bakery there were five workers who had brought
various things for equipping it. They cleaned out the dough troughs and scrubbed
the floors. One small room was blocked by a collapsed wall. They broke down
the door. I chopped some firewood and got the stove going. Father started fitting
window panes. I went out to the ruined yard to collect firewood and came across
several interesting books. While collecting the wood I climbed over heaps of stones
and suddenly one stone slipped from under me and I felt I was falling down. I let
go of the firewood and was just able to hold on with my arms outstretched. A little
longer and I would have been covered by a heap of stones
 410

28 January 1942. Today I began reading the Historical Chronicle, one of the
books I found in the ruins. I really enjoyed the stories The Schlisselburg Tragedy
and The Bright Spring.
Then I went to the bakery and the dough was already prepared. I chopped some
firewood for the stove that heated the kettle of water. Belosevich lit the injector.
When the oven was well heated up they began putting the bread in. We cleared up
the bits of plaster. A cleaner arrived and washed the windows and dough troughs.
The yeast was put to stand until tomorrow. Then they began to take the bread out.
Everyone took a loaf and set off home. I took one too and went home.
Father stayed behind so he could deliver the bread to the commandants office.
When I got home I chopped some firewood for the stove that heated the room
where a German officer and his batman were quartered. They made me light their
stove every day.
I chopped the wood, then after dinner I went out. Borya was there. During
the fighting in the town he had been sleeping at Johns house on the hillside from
which they could see the whole town and the sea. Now Boris had boarded up the
broken windows in his apartment with plywood and brought back the things he and
his father had transferred to Johns house. He used to have eight pigeons, but the
Germans ate them.
Now we were sort of resting. Occasionally a plane would fly over, there would
be a few shots, then nothing.
But from 29 December to 21 January the town was being bombed non-stop
by German aircraft. During that time many horrific things happened before my
eyes. Several bombs fell on a house near the market, burying 30 people. Some of
them were dug out alive, the rest died. But the one impression that will never be
wiped from my memory was seeing the death of a ship. I decided to describe it in
my diary.
There was a slight lull, so Boris and I decided to go up the mountain to see John.
There was a soft breeze. Small waves out to sea. A ship appeared on the horizon.
There were a few Soviet planes flying about. I pointed out the approaching ship
to Boris. The ship came alongside, but then swung half round and pulled away
about 3 km. It did this three times and we watched it for half an hour. The planes
were circling, and I thought that if it turned away a fourth time something would
happen. It did. No sooner had the Soviet planes flown away than the dark dots
of German aircraft appeared. There were 7 fighters and 5 bombers. The fighters
quickly pushed our planes away and vanished into the clouds. The bombers held
their course. Our planes were now far away. The anti-aircraft guns set up a barrage
of fire. But the German planes nose-dived below where the shells were exploding.
Levelling out and flying much lower the German planes started to dive onto the
 411

Roast pigeon for dinner, air raids, ships being sunk,

German soldiers, such was his childhood.
Photo from the archive of M. Borisenko.
 412

ship. The ship came at full steam towards the harbour in order to shelter there.
We realised the ship had had it. The planes approached the ship, formed up into
a line and began dropping bombs one after the other. The ship quickly stopped
her engines and the first five bombs sent up a huge column of water in front of
her. The second plane dropped its bombs, but the ship darted ahead and all the
bombs exploded behind her. The third plane came down lower than the others and
directed its stick of five bombs at the ship. But the ship turned sharply and headed
out to sea. The fourth and fifth planes dropped their bombs simultaneously. The
ship turned towards the port and stopped. The first five bombs fell in front of her,
covering her with icy spray, but the second five fell right onto her. She continued
to move ahead showing no sign that she had been hit. All five German planes,
thinking they had missed, came down to about 50 metres and began raking the
suburbs with machine-gun fire before disappearing behind the mountain.
For the next three or four minutes the ship continued to make her way towards
the port, when suddenly she stopped and heavy black smoked began pouring out of
her central part. We could see that a boat had been lowered over the side and people
were jumping into the icy water and swimming towards the boat and grabbing on
to its sides. The ship quickly began to settle in the water. There were a few flashes
of light on the bridge and a few more on the stern as people were taking their own
lives. After another two minutes or so the ship disappeared. A cutter put out from
the port to rescue the survivors, followed by a second one. When they arrived at
the spot where the ship had sunk they lowered boats and began picking up people.
Then the five bombers reappeared on the horizon. The cutters hastily hoisted up
their boats and made for port. The bombers came closer and then turned away as
there was no ship, just two masts sticking up out of the water as the only reminder.
31 January 1942. Gunfire could be heard from early morning. It fell quiet about
9 a.m. Father left for work earlier than usual because they had to do two shifts today.
After breakfast I sat down to read Yasenevs short story collection Sunny Side. I read
When the Lime Trees are in Blossom, At the Halt, Bright Day, Great Lads
and The Language of Feelings. I liked The Language of Feelings best. Then I
took Tolyas shoes to be mended. Finally at 2 oclock I went to the bakery. They
were already baking a second batch. Then people started arriving to buy bread. The
interpreter from the local commandants office brought 68 kg of flour.
1 February 1942. Guns booming this morning, having boomed all day yesterday
and last night. I have boils that have come up below my knee and it is hard to walk.
But I went out into the yard and helped pump water out of the basement. Suddenly
I heard several bangs in the distance, guns firing at aircraft. Two planes flew along
the line of the coast with shells exploding round them. I couldnt make out who
was doing the shooting. The planes soon disappeared over the horizon. Boris and
 413

I went to get firewood. We collected a good supply among the ruins to take back. I
chopped up the wood and went home with it. There I read some stories from back
numbers of Working Woman which Father had brought back from a ruined house
to use as kindling. Then Mother made dinner and Father came home.
In the afternoon we could hear explosions. They were blowing up the harbour
in case of a landing. They were saying the British navy had entered the Black Sea
and a British submarine was approaching the town
3 February 1942. My boils have become much more painful. After breakfast I
began to read My Land by Ivan Krash. I liked it a lot. Father was off today. He met
Aliks mother and she said they would come and see us. Alik is my friend but it is
two months since I saw him. They came at 2. I showed Alik my diary and various
books. He told me to come and see him tomorrow. They left at about 4. We had
dinner. I finished my book, Mother changed my poultice, and we went to bed.
Also, our officer left us today to go to another lodging, and we got another officer
who seems really nice.
4 February 1942. As we were having breakfast this morning the officer walked
past and he said Good morning and gave Dina a bag of sweets. So he is nice.
Today I started reading Chernyshevskys What is to be Done?1 At about 10 I went
to see Alik and spent the whole day there. In the evening I read more of What is to
be Done? Then Mother changed my poultice and I went to sleep
7 February 1942. Aircraft flying about from early morning. At 10 Father brought
a freshly killed pigeon. Mother plucked it and decided to make soup. Then I went
to the bakery and spent the rest of the day there. Then Father and I came home.
Father took a loaf and went to exchange it for meat with someone he knew. Then
he came home with the meat and we sat down to dinner. Evening already
10 February 1942. Overcast since early morning, the whole town is wrapped in
fog. So muddy outside in the yard it was impossible to walk in it.
The Germans who had been staying in our building left today and were replaced
by new ones. The Germans piled onto carts all their own things and also other
peoples. The horses and carts churned the mud up even more. I didnt leave the
yard and spent most of the day reading books.
2 May 1944. 9 a.m. If I tried to write down everything that has happened to
me since 8 April I would run out of paper. Ill be brief. The 9th of April was a
Sunday and we walked around the town unaware of anything special. On the 10th
the boss didnt send us to work and didnt let us go home. It was the same on the
11th. Russian dive bombers were attacking strongly, and apart from that prices
had become extortionate. No one could work out why this should be, but it was
obvious the Germans were beginning to wind up their affairs.
1
Novel written by the radical Nikolay Chernyshevsky in 1862 while in prison in the Peter and Paul fortress.
 414

On the morning of the 12th there were no more than ten people left in the
dormitory. Despite locked doors and gates the rest had escaped home. We were
put onto lorries and taken to the town. Here several more managed to escape,
but I was unlucky. A column of about 15 vehicles assembled and we were taken
to Sebastopol. Everything was still peaceful in Old Crimea, but there was a lot of
movement of troops, vehicles and carts. There was a traffic jam and our driver
Valentin took advantage of it by sabotaging the lorry and escaping.
Up to that point we had been on two lorries with a German carrying an
automatic weapon on each one. Now we were all on one lorry, with two Germans
sitting beside us and a car coming along behind.
Outside Old Crimea partisans raked the road with gunfire but we got through
safely. We drove through Karasubazar, Simferopol and Bakhchisarai without
stopping, and by evening we were within 20 km of Sebastopol. Here our 15-vehicle
column grew to several thousand.
There were thousands of vehicles ahead of us and thousands behind, and now
the convoy proceeded in a double column of motorised vehicles alongside a single
one of Romanian carts.
All the vehicles were very close to each other and were moving at not more than
half a kilometre per hour, with lengthy stops. It was the same on the afternoon of
the 13th.
There was an air raid by Russian dive bombers at about noon and Deshkevich
and Vozovenko escaped. Dyatlov got away at 1 oclock, but once again I was
unlucky. Finally at 3 oclock when we were about 9 km short of Sebastopol there
was another jam because the leading vehicle had broken down. We were made
to drag it off the road. After removing it we didnt get back onto our lorries even
though the convoy had started to move off, instead we crawled under the horses
and carts and started to work our way backwards as far as possible from our lorries.
There were four of us, but at that point we didnt know why Fedotov hadnt joined
us. When we reached the hills we climbed up and saw the partisans. We stayed in
the village of Kolontay and waited for our regular forces to arrive
1 June 1944. 2 p.m. I am attending school. Today I sat my first Russian written
test and wrote an essay. I hope I can pass all my tests. For me personally things are
not too bad because I have no links with anyone or anything here, especially girls.
They are supposed to be sending Vova Lomakin to the army today. He has been
working at a radio relay centre but was supposed to be going into the army today
because he was born in 1926. Same with Vova Chubarov: I worked at the telephone
exchange with him and he was conscripted back in April, fought at Sebastopol
and distinguished himself. Alik arrived on 3 May and entered the school, but he
chucked it in not long ago and went to work at a tobacco factory as a trainee
 415

The 13-year-old Volodya might have shared the

fate of those who were deported to forced labour in
Germany, but miraculously he escaped that fate.
Photo from the archive of M. Borisenko.
 416

mechanic. Guvin shows up sometimes at the Komsomol. Im thinking of joining

the Komsomol myself.
Everyone born in 1927 goes to classes three times a week at the military
commissariat, even on Sundays. The day before yesterday I swam in the sea.
Several times I have been given jobs to do by the town committee, together with
Kolya Levchenko, Metsov and some others. I have been elected team leader.
I go into town almost every evening. The theatres have concerts and films. In
the park there is dancing at the clubs and various meetings. We have moved house
from 6 Kooperativnaya Street to 28 Timiryazev Street, also in the courtyard of a
bakery. There are no more German planes. We go to the port every Sunday to do
voluntary work. Today we got letters from Nyura Aleksenkova and Aunt Olya.
Nuras son Dima, who is a bit older than me, was called up last year. They write
that my cousin Shuras father died, the husband of Aunt Marusya, and they have
given us their address.
15 October 1944. 11 a.m. I passed all my exams and started in the 8th class, but
because of a loaf of bread Father has been given a year in prison and I have gone
to work in the tobacco factory. Together with Genka Zinchenko I dismantle and
assemble cigarette-paper machines. I get 120 roubles a month plus 20 g of tobacco
a day.
28 October 1944. 1 p.m. I was taken from the tobacco factory and sent to build
a monument, which I am now doing. It is my day off today but tomorrow I will be
working. I go to evening school. I wrote an article and it came out in Victory on
the 21st. Fathers sentence has been confirmed
11 December 1944. 7 p.m. I am now a pre-conscript and spent the whole of
today at the military commissariat. On the 2nd I was received into the ranks of the
Komsomol. I dont go to school much any more. In the past week I went once to
Old Crimea to get tobacco and another time I went about 60 km into the forest to
collect firewood.
I hardly have a free minute nowadays. I work all week, and on Sunday I am at
the military commissariat from 7.30 to 7.30 with one hours break.
22 January 1945. I attended school all week and took the physics exam. At
the factory I have switched from mechanic to motor mechanic. I didnt go to the
military commissariat yesterday because before that I had done 24 hours duty next
to a machine. Father came back for a visit at about 3 p.m. yesterday.
Today is Lenin Day and everyone is on holiday. Our forces have taken Warsaw,
d and Krakw. The Kenigsberg Sector has begun.
3 March 1945. I didnt go to school all week. I wrote a letter to Lena and
Yakovenko. Their father has arrived from Old Crimea. He is starving and asking
for help, but there is no way to help him.
 417

I am working this evening.

3 May 1945. We were celebrating yesterday and the day before. I spent the
whole time with Kolya studying physics. I got a 4 for anatomy. Kolya has been
teaching me to dance. He has turned my head with talk of the Baku institute and
now I am dreaming of getting accepted there. At 11.05 last night they reported the
fall of Berlin. Our troops linked up with the Allies. Roosevelt died on 12 April.
Today it was announced that Hitler and Goebbels had shot themselves. The
Germans are surrendering in Italy. Basically the war in Europe is coming to an
end. Father is still in prison.
An American diesel engine has come to the factory to be repaired. Its bearings
have seized. Classes at the military commissariat have finished. From 8 to 28 April
I was on round-up duty. On the 29th there was a party at the factory.
13 May 1945. We have conquered at last and the war is over. The last German
capital fell on the 29th: Prague. There was a parade on the 9th. We went to get
flowers in the morning, I heard about the end of the war at about 7 a.m. Now its
the process of disarming the remaining German troops. I am once again operating a
lifting machine at the cigarette factory and reading up on how to adjust it whenever
I have time. I was at the military commissariat on the 6th, they were fixing GTO
standards: grenade throwing, jumps, 1-kilometre run, etc.
 418

In May 1944 the Crimea was totally free of German Fascist forces. Photo: the victory salute in liberated
Sebastopol.
Photo by Evgeniy Khaldey/TASS.
 420

Zhenya Vorobyova was a pupil at School 8 in the town of Pushkin near Leningrad
that is all the information we have about her. Her unpublished diary, or rather a typewritten
copy, was discovered by journalists of the Russian Weekly Argumenty i Fakty in the Russian
State Archive of Social and Political History, in the card index of the youth archive.
The body of a hanged man swaying in a doorway of the Aleksandrovsky Palace, pages of
books blowing about in the wind and trampled underfoot on the paths: Zhenya, who before
the war used to read Pushkins lines of poetry inscribed on the plinth of his statue every day
on her way to school, now in the 8th class describes with anguish the destruction of places
dear to both herself and Alexander Sergeevich. Her first diary entry was written in the first
autumn of the war, her last just before Victory. In between there was flight to Gatchina, then
to Pushkinogore where Eugene Onegin was written and where Zhenya saw her idols grave
and where she watched as the Germans took all the poets things away from the museum on
10 carts as if Pushkin were being sent to hard labour, how the men were forced to chop
down the trees in the park and to surround nannys rickety little cottage with barbed wire.
A note at the end of the text we found reads: The diary of the 19-year-old Soviet girl
Zhenya Vorobyova from the town of Pushkin breaks off here. Zhenya herself gave us this
diary when we met her in one of the forest settlements where thousands of inhabitants from
villages in the Pushkin region hid from the Germans. We still do not know who we is.
Argumenty i Fakty appealed from its pages to readers requesting them to help track down
the author or her descendants. It was fruitless. But we would like to believe that Zhenya
survived the war, that her love for the poet, with which every line of her diary breathes,
remained with her. That she returned home to her liberated town and that one day she will
pick up this book, and that her diary, which she had to hide from the Germans under the
floorboards seven decades ago, will return in its thick cover to an owner who has aged by an
entire lifetime. One has to think there is not much time left
 421

17 October 1941. A terrible day. What we have been fearing since the first hour of
the Germans arrival has happened. We are being driven out of the town. Will I ever see
you again, my dear little town? My favourite places, the Pushkin lyce, the little garden
with its statue of the young poet, the Yekaterininsky Park where we have passed so
many happy hours, my school, the royal avenue. I have only now realised how dear this
all is to me. After all, I was born here, lived next to the lyce and every day on my way
to school I used to read Pushkins inspired lines of poetry on the plinth of his statue
How painful it is to be leaving our home town in days of golden autumn, the season
that Pushkin loved so and that I love. As we were walking past the Pushkin garden with
our bundles I caught sight of the statue covered with dark red maple leaves. This whole
month has been oppressive. It was unbearable to see the Yekaterininsky Palace after it
had been destroyed by a German bomb, the ancient park churned up by artillery shells,
the road outside the school littered with torn pages from books and unwashed German
soldiers tramping about the streets and avenues of Pushkin. They have moved into the
lyce and the halls of the palace. They have been bringing water from the ponds of
Detskoe Selo for their huge brown carthorses. I saw the body of a man who had been
hanged by the Germans swinging in a doorway of the Aleksandrovsky Palace. From a
distance it looked as if he was just standing on the threshold. I saw pages from Pushkins
books under the wheels of the German guns that had been set up round our school.
Beasts, what are they doing to our country, our people.
From the direction of Leningrad I can hear constant gunfire. I hope they break their
necks on the walls of our great city
18 October. There is a countless mass of us on the move. Women carry children, old
men drag barrows full of belongings. The first snow has fallen. The crowd moves silently
along the muddy road. The German escorts walk along the verges. With difficulty we
made it to Gatchina where the Germans drove us into cold barracks surrounded by
barbed wire.
19 October. We are being herded down to the station. I write these lines in a
filthy cattle car. They unloaded all the cows and sheep while we stood and watched,
then pushed us onto the same wagons. There is liquid dung underfoot. You cant sit
down. Children are crying. I look back towards Pushkin, its golden autumn copses,
its streets destroyed by the Germans who are now driving us away, we dont know
where.
25 October. We are walking again along cold muddy roads. As I walk, the lines
of Pushkins poetry are ringing in my head, the lines he wrote as he left Tsarskoe
Selo: My friends, our bond is sublime, / Like the soul, it is indivisible and eternal,
/ Unshakeable and without cares. / It has grown beneath the shade of loving Muses.
/ No matter where fate should cast us, / No matter where fortune might lead, / We
remain the same: all the world is alien to us, / Our home is Tsarskoe Selo. These
 422

lines are eternal, they seem addressed to us, exiles from Tsarskoe Selo, Pushkin: My
friends, our bond is sublime. Yes, it is sublime, and the Germans shall not destroy it.
22 November. We walked from village to village for three weeks and for the last
three weeks we have been staying at a womans house. She feeds us and we saw up her
firewood. I never stop thinking about our happy life at Pushkin, my school friends Sima
and Tamara. Where are they now? What roads are they wandering along? I heard today
that the Germans are going to be issuing only 100 g of bread a day
15 January 1942. We are living like paupers. Sometimes I think back to school and
find it hard to believe it all happened. The saddest thing for me is that I am beginning to
forget my favourite poems. The other day I tried to recall the lines inscribed on the base
of Pushkins statue next to the lyce, and I couldnt remember a single word.
10 March. I want to remember this day for the rest of my life, I have never felt so
light-headed and happy since the Germans invaded. I am with Pushkin again, fate has
brought us here. We are living in Pushkin Hills. If I had only known we were coming
here I would not have felt so unhappy. This is Mikhaylovskoe where Pushkin came after
leaving Tsarskoe Selo. This is where he spent his exile. This is where he wrote Eugene
Onegin, everything here breathes Pushkin, and I feel light again, detached, free, as if
the German invasion nightmare was over. Pushkins grave is here, but I am not going
to think about that. Its impossible to conceive that Pushkins grave exists somewhere
in the world.
25 March. They didnt allow us to stay in Pushkin Hills. I was terrified when Mama
came back from the commandants office and told me. Have we got to start wandering
from village to village again? But in the evening Mama went back to the German
commandants office and came home happy: we have been permitted to stay in the
village of Petrovskaya. Its right next to Mikhaylovskoe, right next to Pushkin.
27 March. Today I went to a lake with the strange name of Kuchyane. I could see
Pushkins house on the far shore, a simple bright white building, and not far away to the
left was his nannys rickety little cottage. The Germans have put up barbed wire along
the shore.
15 April. I finally managed to spend some time in Pushkin Hills. I visited the grave.
A white marble obelisk on a hill. Its strange how that transparent white is linked to
Pushkin. White lyce, white house at the lakeside, white marble on his grave. It used to
be silent and deserted here, but then the Germans arrived. I heard how they tramped
in their boots whistling in the church of Svyatogore Monastery. They built a stable
in the monastery precinct. I realised then that as long as the Germans remain in our
country, in Pushkin Hills, in Pushkin, close to Leningrad, there would never be joy and
happiness.
7 May. I am not writing my diary, it is too dangerous. The other day the Germans
came with interpreters and searched the houses. They found Tanyas diary, shouted at
 423

Pushkin was occupied for just over two years. The Fascist soldiers converted the palaces and pavilions into
barracks and stables and stole the contents.
In September 1941 the Fascists shot all the Jews in Pushkin, having discovered them in the basement of the
Tsarskoe Selo lycee where thousands of local residents were hiding from the occupation forces.
TASS.
 424

her, tore up her exercise book and threatened to arrest her. I spent a long time trying
to decide whether to destroy my notes. They contain some things that if the Germans
found out they would have my head. But I could not bring myself to do it. Im hiding
the notebook under the floor.
6 July. Pushkins birthday was celebrated in Mikhaylovskoe. It was arranged by
German lackeys from Pskov. I would like to forget about it but I cant. The beasts
want to shelter under the name of Pushkin. They want to claim that Pushkin is with
them. Some smart Alec in glasses gave a talk in the museum about Pushkin, but I didnt
listen, I just looked at the deserted rooms. It feels as if a lot has been taken away from
here by the Germans. No, theres nothing left of my beloved poet here. I almost burst
into tears, and I ran out into the park. I pressed my forehead against the window of his
nannys little cottage and pretended I was examining the bright little room where long
ago the old woman told Russian folk tales to the young Pushkin.
20 September. I pull out my diary now only to make the most important entries.
Yesterday the Germans drove our men out to chop down the trees in the Pushkin park.
7 April 1943. The Germans are sending the young people to Germany. I try not
to think about what terrible fate awaits me. Its especially horrible to think about after
having read Olya Klimovichs letter that came yesterday. The writing is so tiny that the
censors probably gave up trying to decipher it and let it through. This is what Olya writes
to her mother:
Darling Mama, I send you greetings from faraway Germany. We are living in
barracks, 24 girls to a room, our rations are 300 g of bread, 20 g of margarine, some
thin soup and a few potatoes. Mama, I think back all the time to Petrovskoe where
I could have as much potato and kvass as I wanted. We have to work very hard. I get
up at 5 a.m. and work till 7 in the evening. You probably wouldnt recognise me, I go
around in trousers, jacket and wooden clogs. I made myself an outfit out of a blanket.
We live behind a fence and are marched to work under police escort. Oh my darling
Mama, theres so much I would like to tell you but to us Russians the Germans forbid
everything, we arent even allowed to talk to other people. I miss you so much but Im
glad youre not here in this prison, and when I see you I will kiss your eyes which have
shed so many tears for me.
Poor Olya, no longer can you tell the whole truth. You write fearlessly about
everything but your letters arrive covered with thick black crossings out. Only that first
one got through unscathed.
9 August. I havent written anything for the whole of spring and nearly all summer.
The Germans are more and more angry and surly towards us. All the time I can hear the
sound of axes beyond the lake as they chop down the trees in the Pushkin park and dig
trenches in Mikhaylovskoe. Pushkins refuge for work and inspiration has been turned
into a German fortified base.
 425

10 January 1944. I cant believe whats happening. All this time I have avoided
going about in Pushkin Hills and Mikhaylovskoe so as not to see anything. But yesterday
the Germans made us girls go there to dig trenches and I saw Germans carrying things
out of the Pushkin Museum and loading them onto ten carts under military escort. I
glimpsed ancient armchairs, sofas, books. It felt as if the Germans were taking Pushkin
to Germany, to hard labour, to where Olya is.
15 January. Not long to wait now. Today the Germans burnt our Petrovskaya to
the ground. How long has this little village stood here. It belonged to Pushkins great-
grandfather, and now its gone. Just ashes. Villages nearby are on fire, a sure sign that
the Germans are running away and our forces are getting close. We have moved to
Pesochki, where the Germans have not left a single house standing. It was hard work
building mud huts but I didnt feel tired. All I could think about was surely they wouldnt
dare touch Mikhaylovskoe, surely they wouldnt burn everything there. Surely they
wouldnt desecrate Pushkins grave in their rage.
2 March. Long live the sun, farewell, darkness. Long live my country, my army.
Long live liberty, the Germans are gone. Dear heroes, come and liberate Pushkin.
Behind the
Line of fire:
T h e h om e
Fro n T
 428

Roll of honour for the home front.

There were no Nazi atrocities in the Soviet rear. No one branded young boys foreheads
with five-pointed stars. No one cut skin off their backs to make leather straps. No one hunted
them with Alsatians. No one chopped off a childs hands before sending him mutilated back
towards the Soviet trenches. But of course the bombs found children out on the home front
death from the skies carried off more than 350,000 of them.
That is perhaps the single most painful statistic. The rest seem inspirational at first sight.
For example, during the war years 20 million schoolchildren worked 585 million work days.
At the Kuznetsk metallurgical combine alone child workers turned out enough steel to make
100 million shell cases and enough tank-grade steel to produce 50,000 heavy tanks.
But what sort of life did these young people have as they put all their efforts into helping
those at the front, working alongside adults and sometimes even better than them?
Yury Shchelchkov, born in 1939: We made bread from goose-foot, peat and mares
tail. We went into the fields to collect clover flowers which were nicknamed kumushki. They
were dried, then ground up with pestles in wooden mortars or we rubbed them together with
our hands. We also collected goose-foot
Alexander Kremlyov, born in 1930: I was twelve at the time. I was a big strong lad,
more like the older boys. But when it came to handing out documents they suddenly asked
me, Where have you come from? Youre not yet fourteen. But they kept me. I worked
as a coupler for a year. When I turned 14 I got my papers and became a tractor drivers
assistant, and later an actual driver. We ploughed night and day with no days off until the
season was over. We had four hours sleep a day. After the harvest had been taken in I
earned a sack of grain for the first time. My mother wept with joy
There are many such instances. Legally speaking a childs working day was limited,
even in time of war. But at the Omsk Elektrotekhpribor factory, for example, the children
would keep out of sight of the foremen so as not to get thrown out of the building, then they
would creep back and continue their work. When the adults, men who had been fighting and
seen things, returned from the front they could not restrain their tears when they came across
squiggly notices on the machines written by children with callused hands: Im not leaving
the factory until I have fulfilled my norm!
 430

The Taiga and a small railway station in Siberia only distant echoes of the war reached
as far as this, and to the pages of 14-year-old Volodyas diary. His main worries were how
to feed his family (his father had died before the war), what to read books devoured are
noted in almost every entry and what to be when he grew up. Today we had dictation. I
got a Good. Text: rubbish. The sentences lacked content, the expressions were meaningless.
That dictation yet again strengthened my resolve and belief that one day I will be a writer. I
know its hard but I can achieve it, not for glory and fame but so that people can read good
words and good thoughts. His youthful diary entries laid the foundation for the labour of
his whole life. Vladimir Chivilikhin did indeed become a writer. A real one. After school he
entered a railway engine maintenance technical school, and from there went to Moscow
State University, the journalism faculty. Many of his works were on the natural world, about
which he was greatly concerned. He completed his most important book, the novelistic essay
Memory, of which Part Two came out before Part One and was awarded the USSR State
Prize, a few hours before his death at his dacha outside Moscow on 9 June 1984.
 431

1941
7 March 1941. I am 13 today.
22 June 1941. I learned that the Fascists have crossed the border (western) and
bombed Kiev, Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, Kaunas and other towns. I think Germany is
wasting its time Spent the night distributing notices
19 September. I didnt do much writing. No time. Brilliant news: my sister
Manya has arrived from Chernigov with Alik and Melsana. She brought 2 poods1
of animal fat, a watch, a gas mask. In the evening I walked about wearing Manyas
overcoat
23/10. We have a paper crisis right now. We will be writing on old newsprint. For
the time being I still have my exercise books. Our troops have surrendered Odessa
30th. Had a medical. I am healthy but a bit nervous. Thats what the doctor
said. We are going through Gogols Government Inspector. Well soon be taking
parts and acting it. I am Khlestakov. I do notice my nerves, they are shaky
3/12. A telegram from Vanya2. He has been called up
21st. Day off. What a frost! More than 40 below. I went to the bathhouse in
the morning, then spent the rest of the day on the bench. Mother and I cleaned the
place out really well. I am sleeping there now
26th. No school for three days because of the frost. But now an order has gone
out, we in the 7th class have to go to school on days of severe frost as well Read
Toilers of the Sea3. A world-class book by Victor Hugo. Eight Tales by Matilda
Yufit, also a good book. I am now reading Emile Zolas The Belly of Paris4
1942.
26/1 I have been out of sorts for the past few days. Ive got a whole lot of spots.
Mother left on the 24th. She came to the school one time and started howling in
front of all the teachers. Now they can ban her from the school but she wont go
back anyway. Today for example I didnt feel like going to PE. The teacher asked
me to come but I didnt
2/2. Mother came back. She brought a beautiful clock. I had a fight with Kolka
Tsutsuryuk. I fought pretty well I havent been to school for two days. I got ration
cards
18th. Went to the cinema and saw Captain Grants Children5. It was good.
I liked the character of Robert Grant, a bold, courageous boy for whom it was a
matter of honour to walk a tightrope across a chasm. Read Chernookovs Near and
Far and Steppe in the Fire.

1
1 pood = 16.38 kg.
2
Ivan Chivilikhin, Volodyas elder brother.
3
Travailleurs de la mer.
4
Le Ventre de Paris.
5
By Jules Verne.
 432

The weather has turned nasty: wind, blizzard, snow, frost I am in the
Pioneers. I have taken out a subscription to Pioneers Pravda I go around now
looking like some sort of shady character, with my jacket unbuttoned and a sailors
vest underneath, baggy trousers outside my boots, hands in pockets, Cossack
forelock
12/3 Still no newspapers. I took out two books: Two Romances and Cunning
Eyes. Today the military instructor scolded us for not wanting to play the war game
The Enemys Home Front. I dont want to play it either. You cant go crawling
through the snow in a felt coat. Id like to play but I havent got the right footware.
We had dictation today, I got a Good. Text: rubbish. The sentences lacked content,
the expressions were meaningless. That dictation yet again strengthened my resolve
and belief that one day I will be a writer. I know its hard but I can achieve it, not
for glory and fame but so that people can read good words and good thoughts. (That
was not in the dictation, thats my own words.) Quite soon now Im going to try my
hand and write a short story and I shall try to form elegant sentences. For example,
on the subject of my summer
16th. Day off yesterday. Cleaned out the cowshed. The cow will be calving soon.
Then we can relax a bit, but were short of bread just now. I eat and stay hungry. Tea
and bread mainly I was talking to Borkas father, the head of the trade combine.
He wants to hire our whole class when we have finished our studies and place us on
a subsidiary farm. The great thing about it is that well get 600 g of bread and decent
lodging, and most important, we wont be doing any ploughing, there wont be time
for that. The work will be collecting wild garlic and birch sap, weeding, berries,
mushrooms
25th. The cow has calved. A pretty little calf! We lads all smoke. Manya brought
two 60 g packets of tobacco from the military hospital. I nicked it and now Im
smoking! Here we are!
27th. We got our marks. I got Good for everything except agricultural equipment
for which I got Satisfactory. I get called various names at school: Volodka,
Chivilikhin, Vovka, Chilya, Chil
3/4. Didnt go to school. I fetched water. Went to the market. Everythings
expensive. A rouble for one onion, a rouble and a half for one clove of garlic. Veal is
6070 roubles. Took Melsana to nursery school. Mothers feet are so badly rubbed
they are bleeding. I go round everywhere on errands for her.
4th I sat my algebra test. Got an Excellent. Raisa Vasilevna got angry with us
for some reason. Borka said something to her, she rang his father, the father arrived
home hungry (they have nothing to eat at home) and beat Borka. Borka came
running to me in tears! He is standing by the fence sobbing while I am carrying the
water, and hes vowing to take revenge on RV. I calmed him down more or less,
 433

Apart from having to help his mother

who was bringing up children without
a husband during the lean war
years, Volodya studied at college,
independently, reading many books,
mixing with teachers and school friends.

In the college Volodya (indicated by arrow) suffered a lot because of his worn-out clothes and broken boots,
and for this reason he kept aloof from his contemporaries.
Photo from the personal archive of Ye. Chivilikhina.
 434

went and got the chess set and we climbed up a watch tower and played four games
and ended up 2 all. Tomorrow is Easter
7th. Im in a bad mood. I was surly at school, and at home too. I read Tolstoys
Early Stories. Theyre good, but I dont feel like reading. I got dressed and thought,
Today I shall go to work and snap out of this mood. I cleaned out the cowshed but
still felt depressed. Came home, undressed, lay down but couldnt get to sleep. I
picked up a book, but didnt feel up to reading. Got up again, and now I am writing
this Got a letter from Ivan: hooray! He writes that they are not far from Staraya
Russa living in mud huts in the forest. He is working as an electrician. Vanya has
fought in four different areas: 1 the war in Finland; 2 against the Germans round
Moscow, then near Klin, then near Staraya Russa. He was a driver in the Finnish
war. There are about 20 from here fighting now. The only ones I know are: my
brother Ivan, my cousin Seryozha Morozov, my brother-in-law Lyudvig (Ill write
about him later) and his brother Ignat. Ive got six cousins on my mothers side.
Total: 10
14 April 1942. I was at Borka Chernikovs yesterday. Got Tristan and Isolde out
of the library. Played chess with Vaska Andreev. I checkmated him. Today during
recess Raisa Vasilevna came up to me and asked, Volodya, how much money do
you spend on gifts to the soldiers in your family? I replied, R.V., we get no pay
packets and have no money at home. She called me over at another recess and gave
me roubles. I didnt want to take them but she stuffed them into my pocket
22nd. I punched Yurka Yarygin three times in the face today because he drew a
picture of me with a bashed-up eye on the toilet wall and underneath wrote, Look
at this, lads, someone bashed V. Chivilikhin in the eye. During recess I called him
into the toilet and said, Wipe it off right now! Yurka got nervous: Wipe what off?
Then straightaway he said, That wasnt me who did that. And while I was showing
him the drawing I kept punching him in the eye, again and again.
Mother bought a packet of Narkom cigarettes. I dont know why, but meantime
Im smoking them If only summer would come. To get back to the farm! I shall
take my diary
30th. Exactly five years since my father died
3/5. A day off. I shant go to the forest. Its been cold for the past three days.
Theres a frost. I sleep at home. I go to the canteen with my pass to have dinner.
Thanks to R.V. In the end I did go to the forest, with Vaska. We drank juice and ate
wild garlic, dogs tooth violets and lucerne. We had a great time
13th. Mother was preparing to go for potatoes but they lied to her. There werent
any. Now we dont know where we are going to get seed potatoes for planting.
Nadka is grumbling. I dont know what to do. Mother is the unluckiest woman I
know. At 12 she left the village to work in a factory, at 19 she married Papa. She
 435

had six children of which the eldest, a daughter, died. In 1937 disaster struck: Papa
was stabbed to death. Mother is by nature kind and warm-hearted, but she had to
go through all that. A year later my fathers mother died, and from then on Mother
started having terrible problems with the children. I love her so much I would give
half my own body for her. And I cant imagine life in our family without Mother.
And now we have her little granddaughter Melka as well, and she has to be taken to
nursery, so Mother is at her wits end. I dont know what kind of blow it will be for
her if Ivan gets killed in the war Starting today Im going to get a grip on myself
and help my mother, like leaving the best bits of food for her. Ill finish school and
go to work as an apprentice at the depot or start on a factory training course so as to
be able to help her as soon as possible. She has worked so hard during her life that
her back is bent. We had some chicken stolen and a jug of milk, and Grandma lost
a sheep
20th. No letters from Ivan for a long time.
29th. A letter yesterday. He writes: The Germans are driving us back For
the last three days I have been digging a vegetable patch in the field, and I have got
a bit suntanned. I had a nose bleed from the strain and heat, and because I didnt
have my head covered
7/6. I have entered the NKPS1 training college in this town. I shall only go to
the farm for one month August Borka was not accepted because of his eyesight.
His has a 5% loss but glasses dont help, whereas I have 25% loss and the glasses do
help. Borka will probably go to the collective farm. He has decided to study mole
catching
28/7/42. I havent written anything for a long while. I didnt have time. On the
1st I really gashed my left leg with a axe and was in hospital until the 19th. It was
very boring. My so-called friends only came to see me twice. On the 20th I left for
the harvest and only got back yesterday. I need to get the ration cards. My leg still
hurts a bit
26th Got a letter from Sergey Morozov, my cousin. He says he bumped into
my brother Ivan at the front. I can just picture that meeting They bought a 2-wheel
cart for 500 roubles. Thunder and lightning! So much money these days! Not many
people have been climbing into our vegetable garden, just a few cucumbers, beans,
peas and sunflowers have been taken. Borka is in bed, he cut himself on some glass
yesterday. Weve had bad luck this summer. First I injured my leg, then there was
Nadka, now Alka is in hospital, but getting better, by the way. And finally, Borka
17/11/42. My geometry is not going well. I need to improve. I was talking today
with a student called L. Anzherskaya. Her father is missing in action. I enjoy talking
to her, she is intelligent and well read. We have started a chaste friendship. I shall
1
Narodny komissariat putey soobshcheniya SSSR People's Commissariat for Railways of the USSR.
 436

try to build up her confidence I read Anna Karenina. Managed to get hold of
some Indian ink and am writing. This will have to be the last time. I must keep it for
my technical drawings
1943
17/1/43. I havent written for a whole month. I havent had the time, or the
ink Life is not good at the moment. How could I have imagined three or four
years ago that I would be eating 500 g of bread a day? Here is what I do: I rub 300 g
of the crumb into pellets, add salt and put into the so-called soup, i.e. water and
cabbage, and the crusts I eat with tea, i.e. hot water. That is no life. If I was about
three years younger I would wait for spring and go out to Central Asia. Sometimes
we can get bread under the counter, about a kilo every other day, at the station
where Mother does the laundry. Ivan sent us a letter. He doesnt say anything
special apart from complaining that I dont write to him. Borka Chernikov is having
a great time: theres just two of them and theyve got enough potatoes for the winter
plus they get a white loaf per day. Marusyas military hospital is moving back west
as our forces are advancing. They have introduced stripes and uniforms in the army
here, just like the old army. Lets hope they dont bring back cockades, epaulettes
and aiguillettes
30/4/43. Weve been exactly six years without our father
22/5. Wonderful news: a new directive from Moscow about technical colleges:
1. Students will not be called up into the army; 2. A workers ration; 3. 150 roubles
in second year; 4. 25% extra pay for marks of Excellent and Satisfactory.
30/7/43. I havent written anything for a long time. My schedule does not allow
it. I got Excellent in all my tests. From the 6th to the 22nd I was at army camp. They
really gave it to us. Ill write about it sometime. Spent 8 days bringing in the harvest.
I went to the chief He has sent me to work at the depot, I dont know what as,
either a stoker, apprentice plumber or lathe operator. My ration card now is for 800
g. Things are a bit easier. Ivan writes me letters. He sent me his certificate. He is a
sergeant.
27/7/43. I have been working for a month as an apprentice plumber at the depot.
The work is very dirty. I go around filthy almost all the time. The potatoes are ready
to lift now. We are digging mercilessly. I never feel hungry these days. My one worry
is shoes and clothes. My boots are torn and I havent got a single shirt. Theres not a
stick of firewood left. Five loads of hay at home and three in the forest. I notice that
in the winter when there was not much food I smoked like a wolf, but now that I am
relatively full I dont feel drawn to tobacco. I wish we could get back to classes
4/12/43. I went to the cinema the other day. It was The Aerial Cabby1. Not
bad. I am learning to dance. The only problem is, no teachers. And probably theres
1
Vozdushny izvozchik, a 1943 film.
 437

no point anyway, as I have nothing to wear for dancing in the evening. I am on quite
good terms with the lads in our group. Not so good with the girls, because their
attitude does not quite match mine
1944
1/1/44. On New Years Eve, 31 December, that is last night, I went to a party.
I get there and there are sentries standing all round with rifles. The commander
and his militia. Well, what sort of a party was that? I left and went to visit Borka. A
bit of a spree. Borka wants to go east to some nautical school. Thats his dream. To
be a sailor! He has been cherishing it since he was a child. His mother encourages
him. On the whole New Year went off quite well, with the feeling that perhaps
this was the last time we would celebrate it together: me, Volodya Krivoshein and
Borka. We embraced and spent the evening singing as we had never done before.
Like gypsies
10/1/44 The grubs running out here. Its all right for me, I eat at the canteen,
but Mother and Borka are going to go hungry. We have a new principal now. Hes
a bit of an aristocrat, communicates with the students through the department head
We have to keep our hair combed and look after ourselves in terms of cleanliness
and tidiness. How am I supposed to look neat when I have one single worn-out suit
(last years prize)
I read Tolstoys story Polikushka wonderful! Oh, books, what would I do
without you in these dark days? I will say without any hesitation that books are my
support, my firm support. Where else would I be able to find any cheerfulness or
joy in life? With all the wisdom they contain they help me to maintain my authority
among the lads, otherwise I dont know how I would manage, with my fat nose, old
suit and long forelock. I cant imagine going through a day without reading a couple
of dozen pages of good literature.
19/1/44. I havent heard from Ivan for a long time. Mother cries. Its worst for
her. She worries about him, and at home everything is going to rack and ruin. There
isnt enough hay, the potatoes are running out, nobody has shoes or clothes. She
herself goes around in rags. She doesnt eat enough but gives everything to us.
29/1/44. Passed all my tests. I just have my workshop practical. Im surprised
at how insensitive my fellow students are. I realise I am not particularly attractive
to look at, but I cant do anything about that. Those eyes, that nose, that suit!
Sometimes I get so angry I feel like coming out with coarse language and even
obscenities. I like to have a good laugh too, but after that I reduce everything to an
innocent joke. N and I are writing to each other, but there is not much point. She
doesnt say anything intelligent or original in her letters. I am behaving very badly
at home. My mother, sister and the others are at their wits end, they are worn
out with poverty and hunger, and sometimes I find it hard to talk to them without
 438

raising my voice. Sometimes I cry, though as a boy of nearly 16 I feel ashamed

to cry.
8/2/44. At school the other day Borka started to laugh at me, mainly at the
way I looked. I began to make a joke of it, but then he started to sting me like a fly
and some of the other lads began to laugh at his unfunny jokes. I didnt show the
anger that was boiling up inside me, but just went home. Yesterday at dinner the
same thing happened. Borkas all right basically, but once he gets hold of an idea
he wont let go of it. In the evening he asked me to come to his place to help him
prepare for his electrical engineering test. Im always happy to help a friend. I went
round in the evening. He arrived home five minutes later and said to his mother,
Ma, Im going to the club to see Balzaminovs Marriage1. But Volodya has come
to teach you. No, Ma, Im going to the club. And I have to say that I hadnt eaten
anything that day except 500 g of bread (and that was in the morning). While Borka
was eating I began to think of Mother, the family, and the whole situation at home
compared to the Gulyaevs. Volodya Krivoshein arrived. Borkas mother tried to
persuade me to go to the club. Off you go, Ill give you some money and you can
wear one of Borkas shirts, and so on. I refuse. Then Borka starts to undress me. He
unbuttons my jacket and catches sight of my undershirt. I still refused, said goodbye
and ran away, I literally ran because a howl was coming out my throat and I could
not hold back the tears.
Ivan sent a letter. Great joy: the cow has calved three weeks early. The calf is
small and the cow is not producing milk. All the potatoes
8/3/44. I am 16. I dont think I have lived long, but what could I have achieved
in those years? What am I at 16? A tall, thin, dark boy in yellow trousers and an old
jacket. What am I inside? The main thing I think about is real life and a hope for the
future. My present life has given me a very unstable character. Sometimes I laugh
and make other people around me laugh, sometimes I am gloomy and surly all day.
For some reason everyone seems to think I am a person of heightened abilities and
the only reason I dont get Excellent in everything is that I am lazy. But I think that
yes, I do have abilities but the reason I dont get a 5 is that I am not always feeling
in the mood for study and that ones mood depends to a large extent on the state of
ones stomach, which with me is not always a normal one. Then there is my love of
literature. I read during lessons, I read in the canteen, and I read at home. So the
time needed for study gets used up on reading. I have been smoking for three years
but that doesnt make me feel superior to a lad who doesnt smoke. I even regret
getting into the habit. But tobacco drowns out the unpleasantnesses and trivialities
of life: it dulls the feelings and thoughts that might come floating up if I didnt have
a fag stuck between my teeth
1
Based on a trilogy of plays by A. N. Ostrovsky.
 439

31/5/44. Went to Iverka station to get potatoes with our neighbour who has
been fighting at the front. At Anzherka two girls, medical students from the institute
in Tomsk, climbed onto the middle shelf in our carriage (they were also going to get
potatoes, in Berikul). So I found myself sitting next to S. G. I cant describe what
she looked like because it was dark and you cant see much by lighting a match. She
began to sing. What singing! She sang, and I listened speechless. Then we got talking.
Shes OK, intelligent, in her second year, a social activist. Between conversations
she sang again. Such songs and such melodies that if I was given a choice I couldnt
have picked ones that suited my mood more perfectly. My neighbour got talking to
his friend Sasha and didnt take any notice of me. It was difficult to lie flat so she
and I both turned onto our sides so that our faces were only a few centimetres apart.
My hand accidentally touched her hair and I began to play with it and stroke it.
Darkness On all sides was the sound of snoring, wheezing and coughing. On the
bottom shelf an old woman was whispering something And at that moment she
started singing again, a heart-rending song. I put my left arm round her and pulled
her towards my chest, saying something to her. She answered distractedly. A kind
of warmth spread all over my body and I felt an attraction that no youth of my age
could have failed to feel. But all the exalted feeling came down to something very
prosaic. After all, a railway carriage is not a park, and we were getting into Iverka.
I made a note of her address and shook her hand. She grabbed me by the collar and
pulled me towards her face, and I saw her eyes in the moonlight that was shining in
through the window. I left. I write perfectly frankly because later perhaps I might
have to think through and analyse my actions. I dont know what another lad would
have done or what he would have thought.
5/9/44. The most likely thing is that need will oppress us once again because
there is not a stick of firewood, very little hay and of our basic food substance, our
second bread, i.e. potatoes, we harvested only 8 tsentners1, but for the winter we
need about 20. I have found a solution to this: I have earned a little bit, now I need
to bring it home. Mother and I have been working literally like slaves in Izhmorka
and eating properly. I even feel I have put on weight. Brother Ivan sent us a letter
with a photo and the brilliant news that he has been awarded a Red Star. I am
pleased and rather proud
18/11/44. I have learned to dance. Tango and foxtrot. The waltz is not going
so well
22/11/44. No matter what I am doing at the institute I cant forget about home
for a moment, and all their needs. I have no overcoat and no fur coat, and no deer-
skin boots (no one in the family has any), so I go about in ordinary boots and my
toes get frozen. Yesterday it was minus 40 and my ears got frozen as I was walking
1
1 Tsentner 'quintal' = 100 kg.
 4 40

to a meeting. Lenka Litovskaya rubbed them with snow for about ten minutes, but
it didnt help and now one ear has gone grey and will soon probably crack. I cant
imagine what clothes Mother goes about in. She sewed some galoshes onto her
old boots. My little brother Borya doesnt go to school but I know he really wants
to. I am worried that the potatoes (about 100 buckets) that we earned working in
Izhmorskaya will rot.
Mother cries every morning and curses the firewood, the stove, the social
security, us, herself. The social security needs cursing. Nadka and Mother have
been repeatedly to their office, Vanya has written like a frontline soldier without
standing on ceremony, but to no avail for the past three years. People say it is not
social security but social string pulling.
26/11/44. I got onto the union committee by a majority vote. I was recently
accepted into the union. Not so long ago I was in first year, and now the first years
gulp when they see me
Mother has caught a cold and is seriously ill. If she takes to her bed its curtains.
Borisok, my Pot-bellied Montya, will probably soon be going to school. Thanks to
Vanyas letter to the military prosecutor they have issued felt boots and coats. The
frosts are amazing. It hasnt been like this in November for years. Between 40 and
50 below. The gossip is that it is going down to minus 60 soon. With my clothes
horrors!
18/12/44. One girl called me selfish. Its the second time I have noticed that.
Im not angry. One needs to take account of what other people say about ones
shortcomings. But am I so selfish that its obvious? Theres clearly some truth in it
but not so much that I stand out from the others. She is the first to have commented
on such an unpleasant trait in me. I shall try to watch myself. And basically I have
decided to give up cracking jokes and laughing because theres no point in it. I
dont want to be thought of as a joker. That would be most unsuitable. The lads
are planning to go to a party at the club. Im not going to go. I would go, but I
have nothing to wear. Volodya came round yesterday, my friend. Im lying in bed
(because Mother is mending my trousers) so he is forced to sit down at the table
with his back to me so as not to embarrass me when I get dressed. All very tactful. I
shouldnt be ashamed of that. I wont be! Its false modesty
31/12/44. Its 2 p.m. Im sitting here waiting to see in the New Year. A very
interesting thing happened today. Everything was normal. I went to the institute
for a New Years party, and called in on Volodya Kriv. Hes getting ready to go. He
puts on a fine suit and boots. Im in my everyday clothes and old deerskin boots.
I find out that Im on duty tomorrow for the night of 12 January 1945. (I didnt
attend the practical at the depot today, I didnt have suitable clothing, just my usual
everyday clothes). We get to the institute The director of studies sees me and says,
 4 41

Youre on duty today. Ive already done three duties, many people havent done
any. Get to your post. Im going home, Im not going on duty. Youre not going
home! He looked at me, then turned away: You get 10 days in the guardhouse!
I came out of the smoking area and left. On the way I met some friends. They
advised me to go back. I got home very upset, picked up Tolstoys Polikushka,
read it through and felt awful. I looked at my feet, saw my patched trousers (also
everyday) and spat angrily. Then I remembered my family, my mother, her life (to
me she is the ideal mother and a person going through hellish torment with great
patience). I felt a stab of pain in my heart. I recalled the directors words: I have
my reasons for putting you on duty. What reasons? Doesnt he like my face, or is
he just trying to discover my character? Well hes probably discovered it, and Ill
get the guardhouse
1945
15/1/45. Came out of the guardhouse today. I was inside 10 days. Heres an
excerpt from my notes: I have been in the guardhouse 6 days now. We sleep from
2 to 5. When they clear away the beds we manage an extra nap. They take us to
the canteen twice a day and we are allowed parcels from home. The engine drivers
are good people, and basically you get to know a person when you spend 10 to 20
days with him. My work schedule: 6 days lighting stoves in the dormitory, two days
fetching coal and two days doing nothing. Now Ive got to know four drivers I
have come to the conclusion that the guardhouse is not a punishment and, more to
the point, it does not reform the criminal. The workers here just relax
26/1/45 Ivan sent us a letter. The first for a long time. Hes been eight years
in the army and is only a lieutenant. No grub. Im going on a tour again tomorrow.
This time to Yurga. To the west of here. I go around like a ragamuffin. No change
of clothes. One of Chekhovs characters says, We will live. We will live a long, long
sequence of days and long evenings, we will patiently bear our trials and whatever
fate sends us. We will labour for others both now and when we are old, without
knowing rest. And when our time comes we will die meekly and then, from beyond
the grave we will say that we have suffered, that we have wept and had bitter times,
and we shall see a bright, beautiful life, and we shall look back on our suffering
with warmth, with a smile and we shall rest. I believe this, I believe it ardently,
passionately.1 I want to see that life not beyond the grave but here, on earth. I too
believe ardently and passionately that I will see such a life.
28/1/45. There was a party at the technical college yesterday but I cant write
about it because I didnt go. I called on some of the lads. They were all getting ready,
getting dressed, but I had nothing to change into. At 3 a.m. I managed to get the
train to Yurga. I went to the market, bought potatoes and got back in the afternoon.
1
Sonya in Uncle Vanya, Act IV.
 4 42

Im sure this constant worry over a hunk of bread is good training or teaches one
a lesson, but I cant work out what. I went to see Volodya. We day-dreamed about
the institute. If the circumstances were right I would leave straightaway. I have to
write down the following: The most important thing is to work and do ones job,
to look, listen, learn, understand, to write when you have something to write about
but not before, and not too long afterwards, dammit the most important thing is
to work, to learn to work.1
17/4/45. We dont foresee any blockade this spring. Our little cow is saving
us. I delivered a 2-pood2 calf. Victory, i.e., success. The project is progressing. I am
drawing. Im not getting any more 2s. Ivan is helping us. He sent us 1,200 roubles
the other day. I played two games with Borka Chernik and beat him brilliantly.
Brought a piece of railway line back home from the station weighing about 25 kg. I
am working on it, trying to mould it.
9 May 1945. A memorable day. Germany capitulated today. The war is over.
Its possible, very likely even, that there will be war with Japan. How long will they
go on killing people?
I got back from the subsidiary today. We were struggling with the potatoes. I was
woken up in the morning by Borka Chernikov pulling the covers off me and yelling
Victory! Its over! and then he began to dance round me.

1
Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon.
2
About 33 kg.
 444

This brief diary records Kolyas transformation from boy to man. Here he is, a 12-year-
old diving from the jetty in Vladivostok and swimming in the sea with the other boys, and now
here he is ploughing through the ocean as a boy seaman under fire. And it is not important
whether it was in answer to a longing in his heart that he came one day to the port in the hope
that they would take him, an orphan, to sea, or whether it was simply because of hunger.
Kolya kept a diary while at sea, but the assistant political commissar confiscated his notes:
under wartime regulations it was a punishable offence Here is what we know about this
person: Nikolay Ustinov participated in many voyages, both escorting international convoys
and on independent missions, eventually reaching the rank of captain. He delivered strategic
cargoes from the Allies while under hostile fire. He spent time in Vancouver, Olympia in
Washington State, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Miami After the war he visited
Korea and China. He attended nautical school in Odessa and graduated from the college in
Vladivostok. For fifty years he served in steamships on Sakhalin Island. He got a degree in
history. Nikolay Vasilevich Ustinov has two daughters, four grandchildren and 41 awards.
His most precious was to have served as a boy seaman on deck defending his country.
 445

May 1941. Vladivostok. Warm. Bright sunshine, and Lenya and I are swimming
already. There are lots of people on the beach. Foreigners from the German embassy,
children ask us to dive for sea urchins and starfish and weve had enough.
June 1941, the 20th. Only boys swimming at the beach. No more German women
with their little girls. We go home. The German flags have been taken down. Weve
heard the Fascists have suddenly invaded this country
July, the 21st. Father received notification, hes been called up. Mother and I didnt
know where he had gone, but a man came today and told us Father is serving on the
Japanese border not far from Vladivostok
September, the 14th. We are travelling round Usuriysk. Everyones wearing uniforms.
They are loading tanks and guns. Lots of soldiers. We were travelling a long time. We got
a lift from someone who dropped us off at the dug-outs. We were able to see Father.
September, the 15th. Father took me to a special apparatus through which I could
see Japanese soldiers quite close up. Its very interesting watching their soldiers marching
up and down and the tanks driving along the border. You could see the Japanese are very
strong.
July 1942. I got a note from Father. He writes that he is at Stalingrad. Theyre getting
ready for battle.
One of Fathers fellow soldiers came here and told us he has been seriously wounded
and is in the military hospital.
I never saw my father again. Mother received notification of his funeral. She cried a
lot. I am really sorry for her.
July 1942. I heard that children whose fathers have died at the front are being taken
onto ships to learn seamanship.
August 1942. They rejected me, they said I was too small.
September 1942. I went down to the port where they were loading a ship. They gave
me something to eat but wouldnt take me on. I was hungry. Walked round the port with
the other boys. Under a tarpaulin we found mountains of food they were sending to the
front. I grabbed a couple of tins of meat. Went to the personnel office. They sent me
down to a ship in the harbour to clean tanks. I was gasping with the smell and fumes and
stuffiness. They fed me.
June 1943. At the personnel office they agreed to let me work on ships of the Far East
and Arctic steamship lines. I ran to the ship with the piece of paper in my hand. Why are
they sending such young people, youre just a child, said the bosun. But they took me
anyway and fed me straightaway.
19421943. I have received my naval paybook! It means I can now go abroad.
1 May12 July. I have been working, taking turns at the wheel, doing watches,
painting, tidying the ship, getting her ready to take on cargo. The Americans said
that Soviet vessels are the cleanest.
4 46

OctoberNovember. Severe storms. We are on our way from the USA and
Canada. We cross to the Arctic. Unloading at Sevmorput. On to Vladivostok
November, the 23rd. The wind is freshening. We are all right so far. The ship is
creaking at the seams. But this weather suits us. Enemy submarines dont make an
appearance. We dont have to worry about torpedoes
5 August 1945. We are sailing cautiously past the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
We have to catch up with a convoy of Soviet vessels, pass through La Prouse
Strait and proceed on to Vladivostok.
7 August 1945. We are approaching South Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands. We
landed the reconnaissance group on the Kurile Islands and the boat has returned
to the ship.
8 August 1945. A warship came alongside during the night and transferred a
second reconnaissance group onto our ship. As we were a merchant vessel nobody
bothered us. In this way we offloaded several Red Navy sailors and reconnaissance
groups on South Sakhalin and the Kuriles.
9 August 1945. I am at the wheel. Im not tall enough to manage it. I bring an
ammunition box to stand on. The men are beginning to move about on board. We
are approaching the northern tip of Hokkaido Island.
1011 August. We have received the order to blockade the northern coast
of Hokkaido Island. Action stations! A torpedo is approaching the ship. They
concentrated small-arms fire on it and changed its course.
September 1945. Our mission round the coasts of South Sakhalin, the Kuriles
and Hokkaido Island lasted 27 days, coming under hostile fire from anti-aircraft
guns on land, Japanese submarines and aircraft dropping torpedoes from the air.
3 September 1945. We received orders to proceed to Magadan, and from
there to the USA and Canada In the afternoon the whole ships company were
ordered to muster on deck. We had sailors from the Navy and marines as well.
Captain N. F. Buyanov and his first lieutenant A. F. Molodtsov came up on deck.
They read out an order from Commander-in-Chief I. Stalin to the effect that on
2 September 1945 an agreement had been signed for the unconditional surrender
of the Japanese armed forces. They congratulated us and that evening threw a big
party. We all rejoiced!
 4 47

Kolya Ustinov, the boy seaman under fire who had begged to go
to sea at 12 years old because he was so hungry, rose to the rank
of captain on long-haul runs.
Photo from the archive of N. Ustinov.
 4 48

Without a strong home front victory would not have been assured. And that home front rested on the fragile
shoulders of hundreds of thousands of children. Those children did not see the horrors of the bombing or the
atrocities of the Fascists. But they worked day in, day out in heavy industry assembling tanks and making shells.
Therefore the victory was theirs too.
TASS.
 4 50

The single Moscow diary in this book was discovered by us at the Museum of Modern
Russian History to which it had been brought by the author herself, Natalya Aleksandrovna,
at the beginning of the present century. Our material situation was difficult, my husband
was ill, and in the hope of obtaining at least something for my old things I offered the museum
my diary It contains just a few pages written in the perfect script of a girl who always
achieved Excellent in school and always had faultless handwriting, for such was Natasha
at 12 years old. All my wartime experiences were new at first and I couldnt wait to record
them. But as the war dragged on it became depressing, it was cold and we had no heating
and I remember that all we had to eat was potatoes which we cooked on a small stove, two
small potatoes per person I didnt feel up to keeping a diary.
Natalya Aleksandrovna still lives in the same building on Old Arbat, just opposite the
Vitor Tsoi wall1, where she spent the war with her grandmother. Her father was in the home
guard, her mother was doing war work at the front. She entered the film studies department
at the All-Union Institute of Cinematography, then worked in newspapers and journals.

1
Thewallof37ArbatcoveredwithgraffitibyfansofVictorTsoi.
 4 51

22 June, Sunday. Last night was the first proper alert, and on the night of the
23rd a bomb fell on the Vakhtangov Theatre. All the windows in our building were
blown out. The Germans continue to advance, they have taken Smolensk. Moscow
is transformed: there are sandbags on the streets, in many buildings the windows are
smashed and have been boarded up with plywood. On the night of 5 August a bomb
fell on Starokonyushenny Lane and our windows got broken again. Many buildings
have charred timbers sticking out of them. 26 Arbat burnt down and also one house
in Konyushenny Lane. Three incendiary bombs fell on our building, one of them on
the rubbish heap. All three were put out. A big high-explosive bomb fell on Volkhonka
and two on the chemist on Povarskoy Lane. Kiev has been taken. The Germans began
a general advance at the beginning of October. Moscow is panicking. Queues for
food have grown huge. You have to queue for a whole day to get bread. There was a
particularly bad panic on 16 October. Monstrous rumours were going round. Moscow
has been declared to be in a state of siege. The Germans have come as close as 2025
km away.
Departments, factories and even ordinary citizens are being hurriedly evacuated.
Barricades and anti-tank barriers are going up on the streets. I spend the night in
the shelter. There have been frequent alerts all through November. Sometimes they
drop bombs even when no alert has been sounded. One day was like this: first alert
at 6 p.m., all-clear at 9; second alert half an hour latter going on till midnight, then
from 1 to 5 a.m., and another alert at 8. It was like that for several days. In November
I saw a dogfight. There was intense fighting for the whole of November. Suddenly,
at 11 p.m. on 29 November, the latest news is transmitted over the radio (up to now
the radio has been closing down at 10 p.m.). But they didnt tell us anything special.
We took Rostov-on-Don and Tikhvin back at the beginning of December, then Istra,
Klin, Solnechnogorsk, Kalinin, Naro-Fominsk, Maloyaroslavets and Volokolamsk.
Hitlers plan to capture Moscow has fallen through. Our forces continue to advance
west. They announced on the radio on New Years Eve that anti-aircraft gunners and
sound locators had been ordered to be particularly vigilant that night in protecting
Moscow. On that same day our forces retook Kaluga. At 6 a.m. on 6 January there was
a powerful explosion that could be heard from all regions of Moscow. We found out
later that a chemical factory had been blown up somewhere near Krasnaya Presnya.
In our building windows were broken in apartments 7, 11 and 12. We dont have alerts
any more. There have only been three so far in January. So the air-raid shelter that
was constructed in our building for injured people stays locked the whole time. On
21 January we took Mozhaysk. Evacuated departments are coming back to Moscow.
On 25 January we took back the last towns in the Moscow region. On 4 February the
Germans occupied Feodosia. Our troops continued to advance during February, and
there wasnt a single alert in the whole of February. Our troops continued to advance in
 4 52

March but there havent been any substantial changes on the various fronts. In March
communication with Leningrad was re-established. That is very important because
they have had terrible famine there. The information we have been receiving all April
In May the Germans used gas at the Kerch sector. Here they have gone onto the
offensive. But in the Kharkov sector we have made significant advances.
There are rumours that the war will be over in June. At the end of May our troops
surrendered the Kerch peninsula. The Germans are conducting a strong advance on
the Southern front. At the beginning of July we surrendered two towns in the Kharkov
sector and Sebastopol on 5 July. At the end of July and beginning of August our troops
continued their fierce fighting on the Southern front. They have abandoned the towns
of Voroshilovgrad, Rostov and Novocherkassk. The Germans are threatening the
Caucasus and the Volga.
At the end of August our troops began an advance in the Kalinin sector. They
advanced 4050 km on the 27th.
In September the Germans continued their advance in the south. Fighting is going
on for Stalingrad.
 4 53

The Moscow schoolgirl Natasha Kolesnikova.

Our pre-war class is written on the back of this photo. Natasha is second from the right in the third row from
the front.
Photo from the archive of N. Kolesnikova.
 4 54

Women and children fed the front. It was hellish work because all the machinery and horses from the villages
had been sent to the front, so ploughing, sowing and gathering the harvest was done by small children with
their own hands.
TASS.
 4 56

A childs name? A little boy? A little girl? We have no idea whose hand held the pen for
this diary of the Timur Squad, or where or when it was written. We know nothing about this
document. It was unearthed in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History by
journalists from the Russian Weekly Argumenty i Fakty. A simple list of good deeds prefaced
by a letter of gratitude, presumably from the family of the fallen soldier that is what came
into our hands. And today a schoolboy of the same age as were the kids of class 5b of School
52 in this unidentified town might find it hard to say who the 'Timurites', or members of
Timur's squad actually were. But after Arkady Gaidar's book Timur and his Squad came
out there wasnt a town or village in the whole country in which Pioneers in red scarves did
not begin their elemental activity, taking under their wing frail old people, families that had
lost their father in the war, nurseries and orphanages. The Timurites gathered in the harvest,
tended the graves of fallen soldiers. As our squad, the children of 5b, write, we swept the
floor and yard, raked the ashes out of the stove, carried water, brought 22 bucket loads of
shavings from an attic, washed peoples galoshes. But wait: isnt volunteer a familiar word
to any pupil of the 5th class these days? If it isnt yet, show him this diary.
 4 57

Dear Nina Dmitrievna,

I enclose a small board for posting the duties of your Timur squad. I am very grateful
to you for taking care of my family. If it hadnt been for you children I would not have
been able to go to work. I am especially grateful to Ryzhkov, Zhukova and Murushkina.
Murushkina is a perfect young housewife!
Could you possibly let me know what subjects I could help them in? What gaps need
filling? I could help them twice a week.
Greetings to Valentina Afanasevna. Have you sent a lot of letters to the front? My
boys have got together a parcel to send to the RKKA1, and the girls have got presents
ready to send to the military hospital. Grandpa, Grandma and I consider you and your
class part of the family. I asked Valya Murushkina to write a letter to the commander of
the RKKA unit where my husband was serving. She sent a very good letter.
Today I am writing about you too. I have composed a short note to the commander
who informed me of Andreys death:
To T. Kroshin, from O. Ya. Serdyukova, wife of Sopins friend in the service.
What strength the memory possesses
To hold our grief, to hold our pain
And how many thousand times do those pass before our eyes
Whom we cannot embrace.
He is gone, there are no more letters from him,
He is far away, yet he seems close.
Bravely he sent out a deadly hail of fire
In the South, in the black gloom, at Stalingrad.
Today I remember him with joy,
I look at the daughter he never knew
And, as if removing a bandage from a wound,
I tell her why he fought.
29/1/44. Zhiznichenko and Levushnova went on duty to O. Ya. Serdyukovas,
brought water and went to the market for soda.
30/1/44. Vlasova, Rodionova and Murushkina tidied the room, washed and cleaned
the crockery, swept the floor, went to fetch water. They helped with the laundry.
31/1/44. Zolotorenko and Agapova swept the floor, went to get water and swept the
whole yard three times. For which O. Ya. thanked them. Zhukova and Murushkina got
dinner and delivered it.
31/1/44. Zhukova and Murushkina located the accounts office, got the dinner,
located the hospital ward where O. Ya.s sick father is, and delivered the dinner to him.
Murushkina and Zhukova helped O. Ya. to find her father in the hospital. They got
bread cards.
1
Raboche-Krestyanskaya Krasnaya Armiya Workers and Peasants Red Army.
 4 58

2/2/44. Zhukova, Ryzhkova and Sopina were coming home from school. The
granny and her daughter were carrying a big trunk. The granny was stumbling because
it was too heavy for her. They helped them get it home. The granny thanked them with
tears in her eyes.
2/2/44. Murushkina washed the floor, cleaned the crockery, went to get water,
chopped a lot of firewood, went to the hospital. She washed a suit and underpants.
9/2/44. Murushkina got the dinner and took it to the grandfather. She washed
some linen. Ryzhkova took Ninochka and brought her back.
10/2/44. Agapova and Zolotorenko washed the floor and washed the linen. Sopina
hung all the washing out and they brought water. Murushkina and Zhukova delivered
the dinner. Ryzhkova took Ninochka and brought her back. Murushkina played with
Ninochka while her mother was at work and sewed up her doll.
10/2/44. The girls all decided not to eat their breakfast and took it to the grandpa
and granny.
 46 0

These pages came to us from an archive in Bryansk where, apart from the diary
itself which had been donated by the authors niece, there was a rather dry note: Alla
Mikhaylovna Rzhevskaya, a descendant of the writer Diesperov, was born on 23 January
1928. She worked as a telephonist. Member of the Bryansk Soviet Regional Committee of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, delegate to the 20th regional party conference,
secretary of the Soviet of municipal telecommunications veterans. Awarded the medal For
Outstanding Labour. Alla Rzhevskaya died that same year of 2013. All our searches for
traces of her life proved fruitless, as were our attempts to build up a picture of her. It seemed
as though these lines written in a childish hand were all that was left of her
And then, just as the Russian edition of this book was being typeset our request for
information printed in the newspaper appendix entitled Argumenty i Fakty Bryansk,
brought a response from a friend who had known Alla and worked with her for fifty years.
She told us that Alla had got married late, at nearly 50, to a soldier as his fifth wife. She had
no children but there were stepchildren whom she loved as her own. Just as she loved her
distant relatives, not having close ones.
She opened savings accounts for all her second and third cousins and step-
grandchildren, recalls Rimma Yazikova. When Alla received her pension she would
immediately share it among her relatives. She was a very sympathetic person, with a kind
soul and a big heart. She helped the veterans of the Great Patriotic War as well as the
wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya, she helped neighbours, friends and acquaintances and
contributed to the World Wildlife Fund. But she herself lived modestly. She was descended
from a family of boyars, so she possessed many old things some of which are now in the local
history museum.
Thus the unfinished portrait of a girl who had experienced the war began to acquire
features and colours And we now know that apart from the lines you are about to read on
the next few pages the memory of a kind person, Alla Rzhevskaya, also survives.
 461

22 June 1941. A memorable day in the history of mankind, not only for the USSR
but for the whole world. At 4 a.m. German Fascist troops invaded the USSR along its
entire border in a general front extending from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. There
was an alert from 2115 to 0105.
3/6. The first day of general mobilisation.
4/6. The order to build air-raid shelters.
5/6. Various orders about the conduct of the population. There was a meeting at
the power station for the creation of an anti-aircraft and anti-gas defence team which
I signed up for. I was given a real army gas mask and a pass for the Bryansk military
district.
29/6. At 1130 the order was given to stick paper crosswise over windows and doors.
We dug trenches from 13 to 16 hours
3/7. I. V. Stalins speech on the radio calling for general mobilisation of the civilian
population.
30/7. There was an alert at 0220. It was accompanied by anti-aircraft and machine-
gun salvoes. Many bombs were dropped on trains at Bryansk 2 station (at least 50).
There was one train of wounded soldiers and another with ammunition. There were
also tanks of petrol and paraffin, shells and cartridges, and the explosions continued
until midday. There was also a train full of Red Army soldiers on their way to the front.
The enemy planes shot them up with their machine guns and dropped rockets and then
bombs by parachute. There was a huge fire.
13/8. There was heavy bombing which set fire to: two streets of houses in Volodarsk
village, including a chemist, a school, a shop and other offices and residential buildings.
I watched the fire for a long time, then went to bed, covering myself with a fur coat,
when suddenly I was woken up by the sound of breaking glass, opened my eyes and
!! the whole room was flooded with light. At first, while I was still half asleep, I thought
we were on fire. I threw off the fur coat, grabbed a blanket, wrapped myself up in it
and ran out onto the stairs where people were shouting, Put the light out! I realised it
was not a fire but electric light and I quickly ran and switched it off. But that light had
lit up the whole bank and several other buildings. At the same time a plane flew over,
obviously saw the light (though it had been on for only about half an hour, maybe less)
and started chucking bombs about and firing its machine gun. But all the bombs and
bullets landed in Pyatnitsky Ditch. Then a policeman arrived and took us to the militia
(NKVD) near the distillery. According to his account he was standing on duty near the
bank (right opposite our windows), there was the whistle and explosions of bombs, and
immediately a bright light appeared in two windows (they werent blacked out). He
rushed across to bang on the door and shout, the light went out (I put it out) and he took
us away. For a long time there was no explanation as to why the light had come on (no
one switched it on), then we guessed that the switch had been insecure and the blast had
 462

caused the wires to connect and turn on the light. It took us a long time to forget that
fire and the incident with the light
20/8. Papa received notification and has gone to the hospital village, where he was
told to report at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Today I got 3 kg of flour for three days.
2324. Days of calm. Papa left at 6 on the 21st. Mama cried a bit, and so did I
(about 5 minutes, no more). I stayed cheerful. Mama went on working.
272829/8. Mama received a warrant from the evacuation office to go to Kirsanov
in the Tambov oblast.
30/8. All calm since morning, but it is a strange calm. Its very quiet and the day has
been so hot. Mama and I have been getting ready to leave although we didnt know when
or where we would be going. Back on the 18th Papa had hidden all our valuables in two
trunks and buried them in the barn, and on the 29th Mama buried Papas trunk of shirts
and linen in the same place. Mama and I went on packing till 2 p.m. I was outside with
Milka the dog tidying the entrance to the slit trench. Mama did the washing outside.
The alert sounded at 2030. We had all our things collected together in the slit trench all
day, so we climbed in and put on our fur coats. The planes arrived. The anti-aircraft
guns started firing and the planes started dropping bombs. To begin with one could hear
gunfire, but then we suddenly heard a whistling. A high-explosive bomb landed and
exploded. Immediately we heard a roaring noise as 710 planes approached, then the
whistling followed by explosions 23 seconds later. The planes came over in groups of
710 every 5 minutes. This bombing didnt stop till 1 a.m.
31/8. 1 a.m. The planes have gone. Milka joined us in the slit trench after breaking
her chain. Just before the last air raid 3 Red Army soldiers came running to our trench.
They had been next to their vehicle near the MPVO1 HQ (it is located in the forestry
institute). The vehicle was blown to bits but they ran away and escaped injury. Although
Milka never used to let a strange man come near her owners, now she didnt even growl
at them. Then the soldiers left, she ran away and we never saw her again. The planes
had gone and didnt come back any more. We came out of the slit trench. The sky was
bright red, claret-coloured, crimson from the fires. The town was burning. We began
to gasp with the heat, smoke and ash. We went out into the street. Deserted, a creepy
sensation. Along the roads we saw burning logs and incendiary bombs still burning.
By the bridge was a smashed car and rifles lying about. The partisans had not
picked them up. We walked across the bridge into the meadow. There were thousands
of people there already, screaming, groaning, weeping, crying, lamenting. Our town
is on a hill, with a meadow below it. Here we were in this meadow. The whole town
lay before us. We could see everything: a building lights up, it begins to burn, the walls
and beams fall in and finally nothing remains but some scorched stoves. About half
the town burned down that night, and anyway the centre and the outskirts had already
1
Mestnaya protivovozdushnaya oborona local anti-aircraft defence.
 463

This sole photo of Alla Rzhevskaya (on the left) came into our hands by chance when our book was already
going to press and we had long ago given up all hope of discovering anything about this girl, and it is all
thanks to the response of an A and F reader. So now we know what the writer of this diary looked like.
Photo from the archive of P. Yazikova.
 46 4

been destroyed and burnt down earlier. We went into town at about 5 a.m. It was still
burning. There were bodies of horses, people and various pets lying around. By some
miracle our house survived. A 4-storey building next door was burning, as well as a
hospital and several little wooden houses. They were all burnt to the ground, yet our
house escaped. We came home, collected all our things into a large sack and went
round to Zhenyas apartment, Mamas friend. She wanted to leave the town with us
and we were just waiting for the train
3/9. 6 a.m. Finally the train started. We could still hear weeping, the town was still
wreathed in flames and smoke. We were seeing it for the last time. We were on our way
to Oryol
91011/9. We have been in Tambov all these days. They gave the evacuees bread
twice in the buffet. Once sheeps milk cheese. We got milk in the village. Traders were
selling cucumbers, apples, pears and sunflower seeds. We live on these.
12/9. At last they provided horses. There were lists showing where people were
to go, which regions, village soviets, collective farms, Soviet farms. It started to rain.
I walked more than half the journey barefoot, 18 km without stopping. The horses
plodded through the mud.
13/9. 1 a.m. We reached the office and there was a powerful thunderstorm. We
quickly dragged our things indoors, spread out some straw and lay down to sleep. We
spent the day looking for lodgings. By evening we had moved into an apartment, had
dinner and gone to bed. I can hardly hear anything I forgot to mention that our train
was bombed and I got concussed and am deaf.
 46 6

An album in which fragmentary entries, sometimes undated, alternate with drawings

or pictures cut out of a calendar, glued onto the page and coloured by hand. There is
poetry, and slogans like For the Motherland! For Stalin! This is what the diary of the
12-year-old Vladislav Berdnikov from Perm looks like. At the end of the war he joined
a secret establishment, the Dzerzhinsky factory, which manufactured detonators for shells
and mines, and worked there for fifty years. Will my grandchildren preserve my family
archive? this is Vladislav Ivanovichs worry now as he lovingly strokes the worn folder of
documents amongst which his notes and drawings are carefully saved.
We will preserve it.
 467

26 June 1941. Its war! I got back from Pioneer camp. On the 22nd a messenger
arrived there from Troitsa and told us. Then we were fallen in under the flag and officially
informed that Fascist Germany had attacked us without declaring war. The chief and
leaders (who are all Komsomol girls) left, and Antonina stayed behind with us.
1 September. Back to school. There were only three lessons today, then they
gathered us together and read out an order from the newspaper. Our men are fighting
doggedly and wearing the Hanses out.
Everyones been ordered to black out their windows and they have been checking
peoples blackout, but they didnt come to our house. Or they just switch off the power.
Then we sit beside a paraffin lamp. But we mustnt waste the paraffin.
10 September. Papa took his new felt boots away because people are donating warm
clothing to the soldiers.
The Red Army men march to the station in formation with music and singing. And
many of our people at Ploskoe have joined the RKKA1. Papa applied too, but he was
given an exemption and kept on at the factory. Bulletins from the Soviet Information
Service and political information service report that our men are destroying many
enemy tanks and aircraft. But the Germans are still pushing.
1 November. In the bread shops now you have to pay money and have your card
punched. The only things you can get in other shops without cards are bay leaf, packets
of mustard and tinned crab.
On Sunday Papa and I went to the bathhouse. The water was warm but not hot. We
washed more or less. There are a lot of wounded in the military and civilian hospitals.
Blind people walk along holding on to each other or to nurses.
I just remembered how I didnt like to eat pea soup. Now I could eat a whole lot of
it.
Weve been consolidated. Uncle Kiril, Aunt Raya and Lyusya have been evacuated
from Vladimir with the rest of their factory. They are living in what used to be our
kitchen. Theyve put up a curtain so they cant be seen from the corridor.
New Year is coming soon. I am trying to get Goods and Excellents at school so
as not to fall behind. But I dont always manage to finish my homework. I have to
help Mama with the little ones and queue for guaranteed foods. Our troops have really
cut into the Fascists outside Moscow!!! They are reporting this on the radio and at the
political information class at school.
Ive caught a cold. Im ill. Im bored. Im reading Timur2. I draw pictures.
22 June, exactly 4 oclock.
Kiev has been bombed, they have told us,
The war has begun.

1
Raboche-Krestyanskaya Krasnaya Armiya Workers and Peasants Red Army.
2
Timur and His Squad by Gaidar. See above, The Diary of the Timur Squad.
 468

Papa is fighting at the front,

Mama is working on the home front.
May the monster Hitler
Hang dead on a post.
16 February 1942. I am ill again. And theres still nothing to eat. Mama cries and
tells us, Lie down, children, drink some water, youll feel better
8 March. The calendar says its a holiday and a Sunday. We are sitting quietly at
home. We heat the stove and bake potatoes. Papa measures out the portions for each
day.
Springsummer 1942. We have planted potatoes in the garden.
In the cinema they have started showing films of how England and America are
helping us. They are sinking German ships. They are even fighting in the deserts. And
you can make a very tasty omelette out of American powdered egg, especially with
onion and nettles.
1 September 1943. I have entered a mechanics college. I go to practicals at No. 10.
To begin with we went on using one-off passes but now they have issued permanent
ones. I went to the workshop to see Papa. I might learn something from him. Apart
from our ration cards they issue vouchers for the canteen. And then the army doctor
Selivanovskaya examined me and she wrote a note that I was to be given extra food.
22 December 1944. I decided to go to the factory and transfer to the evening
department. One more workers card will be welcome.
February 1945. At last I am working. They have issued me with a body-warmer,
trousers and kersey shoes with felt soles. The items we produce you have to be very,
very careful with them, especially when you carry them from one section to another.
I have been transferred to the design department as a draughtsman. But I am still
getting manual workers ration cards. My boss is Boris Solomonovich Tarasyuk, an
evacuee from Odessa. He is cheerful and kind. Hell always help you or make useful
suggestions. But he is demanding, especially when drawings are being prepared for
copying.
9 May. Victory! When the announcement was made we all shouted with joy and
ran out into the street. A meeting was called and Comrade Dalinger congratulated us.
Songs and music over the loudspeakers. They let us go home early. I am walking along,
and all around people are singing, hugging each other, laughing theyre all so happy!
And at home my brother and little sister are dancing with joy. They started hugging me.
We waited for Papa to get home, and when he did, very late, we all hugged him.
 469

During the war the boy Vladislav Berdnikov joined the factory where his father was working: One more
workers card will be welcome, he wrote in his diary. There were six children in the family.

Vladislav (front row, centre) survived to see victory and then worked for fifty years at a top-secret factory, had
children and lived to see grandchildren.
Photo from the archive of V. Berdnikov.
 470

A 12-year-old lathe operator at the Perm motor vehicle factory. The children were too small to reach the lathes
and they got tired, but none of them ever refused to work.
TASS.
 472

Sasha was eleven at the beginning of the war when his father left for the front. His diary
does not begin until the final year of the war, by which time his father was thought to be
missing in action. He longed for his father and secretly sniffed out his Epoch cigarettes from
under the mattress. The lines of Sashas diary have been written with broad-tipped Rondo
pen and are rustically unsophistcated: Woke up, went to school, chopped wood And so
on every day. Basically a peaceful life. The war seemed to be raging a long way away from
the village of Chirikovo. And yet one can read in this youths home front diary about the
main problems of living: hunger, cold
It was the example of Sashas war correspondent uncle that gave him the idea of starting
a diary. Sasha himself, having trained as a driver and having later gone to the virgin lands,
soon published his own first article in a local Altai paper. From the local paper he moved to
a youth publication after returning to Ulyanovskaya oblast, and then worked as a journalist
for The Lenin Way, after which, having served as head of its agricultural department, he
retired. He now lives with his daughter, a broadcaster. His voice is strong but his speech is
slow. There is no hurry now. I travelled round the country a lot and always took my little
exercise books with me. For me they are like the air I breathe.
Sasha waited many years for his father to return from the front, never throwing away the
Epoch cigarettes. But he didnt come back.
 473

5 February 1945. Went to school after breakfast, did three lessons, came back home,
then went to the village soviet to be on duty. A soon as I got there they sent me to the
distillery. Got back in the evening
7 February 1945. Came home from school, had dinner, chopped some wood, did
my lessons. I managed to lift a piece of iron weighing 12 kg with one hand. Started to
do my lessons again in the evening. Mama went to see Granny but didnt stay long
13 February 1945. I wake up in the morning, get out of bed, wash, have breakfast,
put all my books in my school bag and leave for school. Got to school and started on
my maps again. Had dinner, then back to drawing maps. In the evening I had supper,
learned my lessons, then went to bed. I didnt really want to go to bed but I couldnt
keep my eyes open
17 February 1945. I told Mama to get up early but she didnt. It was almost getting
light when she got up and boiled the potatoes. I took two and was about to eat them
when Vitya Vedin came to fetch me. I collected all my things together and took just
a little bit of bread, half a flat cake. Vitya and I left, it was already getting light but the
houses still had their lights on
There are six people in our team: me, Viktor Vedin, Gena Vedin, Fyodor Pechnikov,
Vladimir Shikunov and Galina Svetlova. It was 8.30 already when we left Krasnaya
Sosna. We got to Bazarny at 11, went into the Komsomol regional committee where
they told us the office would open at 2 p.m. We didnt feel like hanging around so we
all went to the station. Vitya bought a beetroot pie and divided it up among us. They
were selling coarse tobacco at the station but none of us bought any. But some of the
lads asked if they could try some, so they took some out of the bag, smoked it and
pretended they were wanting to buy some. Then they said, We cant smoke this, its
really bad.
We got back from the station at 1.25 and sat in the waiting room for half an hour.
They interviewed Volodka Shikunov first, then a second person, then a third, then a
fourth, and finally me. I gave quite good answers. After they had interviewed us all the
meeting began. Shikunov was elected Komsomol secretary and Svetlova his deputy
20 February 1945. Had breakfast, went to school with our cinders to hand in. Me
and Gena Vedin went, they took the cinders and we went into the classroom. About
ten minutes later Antonina Yevgenevna (our algebra teacher) came and we started our
lesson. After five lessons they sent us home.
Got home, had dinner, cut some wood with Volodya, chopped it up, wrote a
headline for our wall newspaper
25 February 1945. Mama left me to go to Bazarny Syzgan but didnt light the stove.
I get up, its already daylight, so Volodya and me take command, i.e., light the stove
and get breakfast ready. Volodya went down to the cellar to fetch potatoes and I started
to get the stove going. Volodya piled up the potatoes, washed them, put them in the
 474

pot (not full). The pot boiled, we peeled two cupfuls, then mashed one half and put the
other aside for dinner.
I put the mashed potato into a bowl, added half a cup of flour and started to cook
it. Out of all this I made 12 terrible flat cakes, and I put them on top of the stove and
in the oven. While they were baking I went round to Granny. I fed her hens and goats,
then came back to take the flat cakes out. It was difficult to get them off the top of the
stove because they had stuck to it like ticks. But even though they were stuck really hard
I managed to get them off.
Then we swept the hut out, had breakfast, and I gave the cow water. Volodya and
Marusya1 went off in different directions. About midday I went round to Grannys to
feed her goats and I dropped in to see Grandpa. Later Im lying on my bed and Petya
comes running up, completely out of breath and shouting, Mama, quick, Grannys
goat has had kids!
Granny put on her torn jacket and the three of us went out to bring the kids into
the hut. I couldnt have done it all by myself, with three goat kids dragging themselves
through the muck. We carried them into the hut
2 March 1945. Grabbed a bit of breakfast and went to school. The teacher arrived a
bit after me and began to teach us. I hardly noticed the lessons going by, five altogether.
After which we had a Komsomol meeting where we talked about helping at the
Krasnaya Sosna collective farm. Got home at 3, but they still hadnt had dinner, they
were waiting for me
From 20 to 24 March, apart from the 23rd, Volodya and I went every day to gather
pine cones and collected 20 kg. In exchange we ordered 3 cubic metres of firewood
1 April. Mama has gone to market. With butter. She took 5 pounds of it with her.
Me and Volodya went on sledges to fetch firewood. Marusya came with us. Me and
Volodya brought back seven bundles and Marusya five. When I got home Petya and I
went to the forest with the gun. But we didnt kill anything. We saw a woodpecker but
it flew away. We played in the snow, then came home.
Mama came home after dinner, she sold the butter for 330 roubles
From the 4th to the 12th, or rather for the whole of the holidays, one day I cut
the firewood and the next day I chopped it up, then we went to Granny Yekaterina
to cut her firewood and did the whole lot in one day. Early next day I went to chop it
up. I couldnt manage to finish it all in one day but by noon on the next day I had it all
chopped up. Tonya and I dragged it into the little shed and stacked it.
All the other days I spent weaving baskets and finished four, one of which I gave
to Granny. On 12 April Mama went to market to sell 4 pounds of butter and on the
way to call in at the chemist for some salt that the village cooperative had asked her
to collect. She got home from there in the evening having sold the butter and brought
1
Sasha's mother's sister.
 475

Sasha (second row, centre)

saw his father off to war
and stayed at home as the
man of the family.

Carting pine cones,

chopping firewood,
carrying water, freezing
and going hungry. He
carved out his own little
victory on the home front,
in the village of Chirikovo.
He wrote his diary. He
waited for his father for
many years after the war.
Photo from
the personal archive of A. Vedin.
 476

medicine, but then broke the little bottle that Granny Dunya had given her for the
medicine
15 April 1945. Mama went to the market to sell milk and a pound and a half of
butter. I got the stove going, but rather slowly because I felt so sleepy. I stored up some
grub made from grated potato. We had breakfast, then three of us went hunting: me,
Petya and Shura Kashin. We didnt manage to kill anything. And we didnt stay out
long because it was really snowing.
When we got back from the forest Granny got angry with me. She had gone into the
hut and smelt paraffin and started saying I had taken the gun
9 May. The day of victory over the German enemy.
I didnt go to school today, but Im not the only one, nobody did. And not just to
school, nobody went to work anywhere, because today is a great celebration (Victory
Day). Since I had free time I went to dig our vegetable plot.
 477

SOURCES
This book makes use of the following archives and sources:
1. The diary of Tanya Savicheva. Preserved in the State Museum of the History of
St Petersburg.
2. The diary of Yura Ryabinkin. Reprinted from D. Granin and A. Adamovich, The
Blockade Book, Lenizdat, 1989. ( D. Granin 2015, N. A. Shuvagina-Adamovich
2015).
3. The diary of Tanya Rudykovskaya. Preserved in the personal archive of Tatyana
Grigorova-Rudykovskaya, St Petersburg. Reprinted from typescript copy in the Museum
of the Defence and Blockade of Leningrad.
4. The diary of Lera Igosheva. Preserved in the personal archive of Dmitry Lando,
Moscow.
5. The diary of Tanya Vassoevich. Preserved in the personal archive of Andrey
Vassoevich, St Petersburg.
6. The diary of Galya Zimnitskaya. Reprinted from S. Glezerov, ed., Eyewitness
Accounts of the Siege, St Petersburg: OOO ITD OSTROV, 2012.
7. The diary of Kapa Voznesenskaya. Reprinted from About Kapa Voznesenskaya:
Pages from the Siege Diary of the Leningrad Schoolgirl Kapitolina Voznesenskaya, St
Petersburg: Krasny matros, 2015.
8. The diary of Misha Tikhomirov. Preserved in the personal archive of Nina
Tikhomirova, Budapest.
9. The diary of Marusya Yeryomina. Preserved in the personal archive of Valentin
Verkhovtsev, Arkhangelsk.
10. The diary of Borya Kapranov. Preserved in the Museum of the Defence and
Blockade of Leningrad.
11. The diary of Lena Mukhina. Reprinted from Preserve My Sad Story: The Siege
Diary of Lena Mukhina, St Petersburg: Azbuka-Attikus, 2011 ( E. Mukhina, heir).
12. The diary of Yura Utekhin. Preserved in the personal archive of Yury Utekhin,
Moscow.
13. The diary of Mayya Bubnova. Preserved in the Central State Archive of Historical
and Political Documents of St Petersburg (f. 4000, op. 11, d. 16, fols 120).
14. The diary of Valya Peterson. Preserved in the Central State Archive of Historical
and Political Documents of St Petersburg (f. 4000, op. 11, d. 86, fols 18).
15. The diary of Sasha Morozov. Preserved in the State Memorial Museum of
Leningrad Defense and Siege.
16. The diary of Kolya Vasilev. Preserved in the State Memorial Museum of Leningrad
Defense and Siege.
17. The diary of Alla Kiselyova. Preserved in the State Memorial Museum of
Leningrad Defense and Siege.
 478

18. The diary of Lyuda Ots. Preserved in the Central State Archive of Historical and
Political Documents of St Petersburg (f. 4000, op. 11, d. 85, fols 143).
19. The diary of Tamara Lazerson. Reprinted from V. Lazerson and T. Lazerson-
Rostovskaya, Notes from the Kaunas Ghetto, Vremya, 2011.
20. The diary of Masha Rolnikayte. Reprinted from M. Rolnikayte, And It Was All
True, St Petersburg: Zolotoy vek, 2002.
21. The diary of Vasya Baranov. Reprinted from P. Polyan and N. Pobol, They Forbade
Us the Light of Day , Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006.
22. The diary of Liza Veyde. Reprinted from S. Glezerov, ed., Eyewitness Accounts of
the Siege, St Petersburg: OOO ITD OSTROV, 2012.
23. The diary of Borya Andreev. Reprinted from P. Polyan and N. Pobol, We Were
Forbidden the Daylight , Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006.
24. The diary of Roma Kravchenko-Berezhnoy. Reprinted from R. Kravchenko-
Berezhnoy, Between Red and White: Freeze Frames from My 20th Century, Gamas,
2008.
25. The diary of Anya Aratskaya. Preserved in the Battle of Stalingrad Museum,
Volgograd.
26. The diary of Zoya Khabarova. Reprinted from MoscowCrimea: A Historical and
Current Affairs Almanach, No. 5, Moscow, 2003.
27. The diary of Volodya Borisenko. Preserved in the personal archive of Marina
Borisenko, Moscow.
28. The diary of Zhenya Vorobyova. Preserved in the Museum of Social and Political
History, Moscow (f. M-7, op. 1, d. 5254).
29. The diary of Volodya Chivilikhin. Reprinted from V. Chivilikhin, Diaries, Letters,
Memories from Contemporaries, Moscow: Algoritm, 2009 ( V. Chivilikhin, OOO TD
Algoritm).
30. The diary of Kolya Ustinov. Preserved in the personal archive of Nikolay Ustinov,
Kholmsk.
31. The diary of Natasha Kolesnikova. Preserved in the State Central Museum of
Modern Russian History, Moscow.
32. The diary of The Timur Squad. Preserved in the Russian State Archive of Social
and Political History, Moscow (f. M-1, op. 7, d. 94).
33. The diary of Alla Rzhevskaya. Preserved in the Bryansk Oblast State Archive (f.
3-2966, op. 1, d. 16, fols 919).
34. The diary of Vladik Berdnikov. Preserved in the personal archive of Vladislav
Berdnikov, Perm.
35. The diary of Sasha Vedin. Preserved in the personal archive of Aleksandr Vedin,
Ulyanovsk.
 Children of War
Diaries 19411945

Artist: Timur Yusupov

Photographic Editor: Elena Borisova
Type-setting: Anna Zhiliakova
Proof-reading: Anthony Hippisley

Signed off 25.03.2016. Format: 70100/16

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