Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 Read Free Page B

and the world’s second-oldest surviving Greek text of the New Testament – left the Public Library (affectionately known as the ‘Publichka’) on the Nevsky.
    Yelena Skryabina and Yelena Kochina, both working mothers, were among the many torn between evacuating with their children and colleagues, and staying behind with their husbands and elderly parents. ‘I am faced’, wrote Skryabina on 28 June,
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    with a serious problem. And that is, that although I could take Dima and Yura with me, I would have to leave my mother and our elderly nanny behind. When I returned home with this news my mother burst into tears . . . Nana is overcome and silent. I am caught between two fires. On the one hand, I understand perfectly well that the children must be saved, and on the other, I pity these helpless old women. How can I leave them at the mercy of fate?
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    Like many, she also half believed the soothing propaganda:
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    I can’t believe there’ll be famine in Leningrad. We are constantly being told of plentiful food stocks, supposedly enough to last many years. As for the threat of bombing – we are also constantly assured of the capabilities of our high-powered anti-aircraft system . . . If this is even half true, then why try to leave? 21
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    Similarly reassuring, paradoxically, was the introduction of rationing on 18 July. At 800 grams of bread a day for manual workers, 600 grams for white-collar workers and 400 grams for dependants, plus ample monthly allotments of meat, cereals, butter and sugar, ration levels were generous (‘this is not so bad; one can live on this’, wrote Skryabina 22 ) and even represented an improvement in diet for the poor. On the same day seventy-one new ‘commission shops’ opened, selling off-ration food in unlimited quantity though at high prices. Unaffordable for many, especially given new restrictions on the withdrawal of savings, their lavish window displays nevertheless helped to instil a false sense of security. ‘When you see a shop window full of food’, thought Skryabina, ‘you tend to disbelieve talk about an imminent famine.’ Kochina was less complacent, rushing to buy the four and a half pounds of millet that was all that was left in her local commission store (‘I hate porridge made from millet’), and she would have left for Saratov with her chemistry institute had it not been for her husband’s opposition and her baby daughter’s illness: ‘Lena has diarrhoea and a fever. We’ll have to put the evacuation off for several days. And in general, how does one handle sterile baby bottles on the road?’ 23 The first of August found Skryabina still out at Pushkin, doing her best to ignore the war and enjoy the deserted palace parks. A niece had come to visit from the city: ‘From her I found out about the rapid German onslaught. They are advancing on Leningrad. We have decided to stay in the country until Luga is captured.’
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    The deluge began a week later. On 8 August, in driving rain, Reinhardt’s panzers began an assault on the northern sector of the Luga Line, near Kingisepp. In three days of chaotic fighting they broke across the Luga River in three places, at the cost of 1,600 German casualties. Manstein’s 8th Panzer Division, recovered from the Soltsi setback, cut the Kingisepp–Gatchina railway line on the 12th. A Soviet counter-offensive near Staraya Russa, launched piecemeal from 10 August, failed, with massive losses of men and equipment. ‘We pushed on a little further’, wrote Vasili Churkin, in charge of manoeuvring a gun-carriage and six horses through woods sixty kilometres to Leningrad’s south-west:
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    and on reaching the high road saw a huge, panicking crowd, running in total disorder towards Volosovo. On a cart lay an injured soldier, moaning and begging for his wounds to be dressed. Nearby a girl with a medical bag was