January 27, the day of lifting the siege of Leningrad, is special in the history of our country. Today on this date is annually celebrated the Day of Military Glory. The city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) itself received the title of hero city on May 1, 1945. On May 8, 1965, the Golden Star and the Order of Lenin were awarded the northern capital . 1.496 million inhabitants of this city also received a medal for Leningrad.
"Leningrad under siege" - a project dedicated to the events of that time
The country has preserved the memory of these heroic events to this day. January 27 (the day of lifting the siege of Leningrad) in 2014 is the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the city. The Archival Committee of St. Petersburg presented a project called "Leningrad under siege." A virtual exhibition of various archival documents relating to the history of this city during the blockade was created on the Internet portal "Archives of St. Petersburg". About 300 historical originals of the time were published. These documents are combined into ten different sections, each of which contains comments from experts. All of them reflect various aspects of the life of Leningrad during the blockade.
Reconstructing the situation of wartime
Today it is not easy to present to young Petersburgers that the magnificent city-museum in which they live was sentenced to complete destruction by the Germans in 1941. However, he did not capitulate when he was surrounded by Finnish and German divisions, and managed to win, although he was, it would seem, doomed to death. In order for the current generation of city residents to have an idea of what their great-grandfathers and grandfathers had to go through in those years (which survivors of the besieged Leningrad remember as the worst time), one of the modern streets of the city, Italian, as well as Manezhnaya the square was "returned" to its 70th anniversary in the winter of 1941-1944. This project was called "Street of Life".
In the above-mentioned places of St. Petersburg there are various cultural institutions, as well as theaters, which even in those difficult blockade years did not stop their activities. The windows of houses were sealed with crosses here, as was done in Leningrad to protect against air raids, barricades from sandbags on pavements were reconstructed, anti-aircraft guns and military trucks were brought in to fully reproduce the situation of that time. This marked the seventieth anniversary of the siege of Leningrad. According to estimates by shells during the events of those years, about 3 thousand buildings were destroyed, and more than 7 thousand were significantly damaged. Residents of besieged Leningrad erected various defensive structures to protect against shelling. They built about 4 thousand bunkers and bunkers, equipped about 22 thousand different firing points in buildings, and also erected 35 kilometers of anti-tank obstacles and barricades on the city streets.
The blockade of Leningrad: key events and figures
The defense of the city, which began in 1941 on September 8, lasted about 900 days and ended in 1944. January 27 is the day of lifting the blockade of Leningrad. All these years, the only way in which the necessary products were delivered to the besieged city, as well as seriously wounded children, was taken in winter on the ice of Lake Ladoga. It was the Life Road of the besieged Leningrad. We will talk more about it in more detail in our article.
The blockade was broken on January 18, 1943, and Leningrad on January 27 was completely cleared. And this happened only the next year - in 1944. Thus, residents had to wait a long time before the blockade of the city of Leningrad was finally lifted. Killed over this period, according to various sources, from 400 thousand to 1.5 million inhabitants. The following number figured at the Nuremberg trials - 632 thousand dead. Only 3% of them are from shelling and bombing. The remaining inhabitants died of starvation.
Start of events
Today, military historians believe that not a single city on earth in the history of wars has given as many lives for the Victory as Leningrad at that time. On the day when the Great Patriotic War began (1941, June 22), martial law was immediately introduced in this city, as well as throughout the region. On the night of June 22-23, fascist German aircraft tried for the first time to fly into Leningrad. This attempt ended unsuccessfully. Not a single enemy aircraft was allowed into the city.
The next day, June 24, the Leningrad Military District was transformed into the Northern Front. Kronstadt covered the city from the sea. It was one of the bases located at that time in the Baltic Sea. With the advance of enemy troops on the territory of the region on July 10 began a heroic defense, which the history of Leningrad can be proud of. On September 6, the first fascist bombs were dropped on the city, after which it began to be systematically subjected to air raids. In just three months, from September to November 1941, an air alert was announced 251 times.
Loudspeakers and the famous metronome
However, the stronger the threat faced the hero city, the more united the inhabitants of Leningrad opposed the enemy. About 1,500 loudspeakers were installed on the streets in order to warn Leningraders about the air raids that were taking place in the first months. The population was notified by the radio network of an air alert. The famous metronome, which went down in history as a cultural monument of the time of resistance, was broadcast through this network. His fast rhythm meant that a military alarm was declared, and a slow rhythm meant hang up. Mikhail Melaned, the announcer, announced the alarm. There was not a single district in the city to which an enemy shell could not reach. Therefore, streets and areas where the risk of being hit were the greatest were calculated. Here people hung signs or painted in paint that this place is the most dangerous during shelling.
The city according to the plan of Adolf Hitler was to be completely destroyed, and the troops defending it were destroyed. The Germans, having failed in a number of attempts to break through the defense of Leningrad, decided to starve him out.
The first shelling of the city
Each resident, including the elderly and children, became the defender of Leningrad. A special army of the people's militia was created , in which thousands of people rallied in partisan detachments and fought with the enemy on the fronts, participated in the construction of defensive lines. The evacuation of the population from the city, as well as the cultural values of various museums and industrial equipment began in the first months of hostilities. On August 20, enemy troops occupied the city of Chudovo, blocking the railway in the direction of Leningrad-Moscow.
However, the army’s divisions called “North” failed to break into Leningrad on the move, although the front approached close to the city. Systematic shelling began on September 4. Four days later, the enemy captured the city of Shlisselburg, as a result of which land communication with the Leningrad Land was discontinued.
This event was the beginning of the blockade of the city. It turned out to be more than 2.5 million inhabitants, including 400 thousand children. In the city by the beginning of the blockade there were no necessary food supplies. As of September 12, they were designed for only 30-35 days (bread), 45 days (cereals) and 60 days (meat). Even with the strictest savings, coal could be enough only until November, and liquid fuel - only until the end of the current one. Food standards, which were introduced through the card system, began to gradually decline.
Hunger and cold
The situation was aggravated by the fact that the winter of 1941 was the earliest in Russia, and in Leningrad it was very fierce. Often the thermometer column dropped to -32 degrees. Thousands of people died from hunger and cold. The peak of mortality was the time from November 20 to December 25 of this difficult 1941. During this period, the standards for issuing bread to fighters were significantly reduced - up to 500 grams per day. For those who worked in hot shops, they amounted to only 375 grams, and for the rest of the workers and engineers - 250. For other segments of the population (children, dependents and office workers) - only 125 grams. There were practically no other products. Starvation killed more than 4 thousand people every day. This figure exceeded 100 times the pre-war mortality rate. At the same time, male mortality predominated over female. Representatives of the weaker sex by the end of the war made up the bulk of the inhabitants of Leningrad.
Role of Life Road in Victory
Communication with the country was carried out, as already mentioned, by the Life Road of the besieged Leningrad, passing through Ladoga. It was the only highway that was available from September 1941 to March 1943. It was along this road that the evacuation of industrial equipment and the population from Leningrad, the delivery of food, as well as weapons, ammunition, reinforcements and fuel, to the city took place. In total, over 1,615,000 tons of cargo were delivered to Leningrad along this route, and about 1.37 million people were evacuated. At the same time, about 360 thousand tons of cargo arrived in the first winter, and 539.4 thousand were evacuated. A pipeline was laid along the bottom of the lake to supply petroleum products.
Protection of the Road of Life
Hitler troops were constantly bombed and fired on the Road of Life in order to paralyze this only salvation path. To protect it from air strikes, as well as ensure uninterrupted operation, the means and air defense forces of the country were attracted. In various memorial ensembles and monuments today is perpetuated the heroism of people who made possible uninterrupted movement along it. The main place among them is Torn Ring - a composition on Lake Ladoga, as well as an ensemble called Rumbolovskaya Mountain, located in Vsevolzhsk; "Flower of Life" (a monument in the village of Kovalevo), which is dedicated to the children who lived in Leningrad in those years, as well as the memorial complex installed in the village called Chernaya Rechka, where the soldiers who died on the Ladoga road rest in a mass grave.
The lifting of the siege of Leningrad
The blockade of Leningrad was first broken through, as we have already said, in 1943, on January 18. This was carried out by the forces of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts together with the Baltic Fleet. The Germans were driven back. Operation Iskra took place during the general offensive of the Soviet Army, which was widely deployed in the winter of 1942-1943 after the enemy’s troops were surrounded near Stalingrad. Army "North" acted against the Soviet troops. On January 12, the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts went on the offensive, and six days later they joined. The city of Shlisselburg was liberated on January 18, and the southern coast of the strategically important Lake Ladoga was cleared of the enemy. A corridor was formed between it and the front line, the width of which was 8-11 km. Through it, within 17 days (just think about this period!), Automobile and railway routes were laid. After that, the supply of the city improved dramatically. The blockade was completely lifted on January 27. The day of lifting the siege of Leningrad was marked by a salute, which lit up the sky of this city.
The siege of Leningrad became the most severe in the history of mankind. Most of the residents who died at that time are buried today at the Piskarevsky Memorial Cemetery. The defense lasted, to be precise, 872 days. Leningrad before the war after this was gone. The city has changed a lot, many buildings had to be restored, some were rebuilt.
Diary of Tanya Savicheva
From the terrible events of those years there is a lot of evidence. One of them is Tanya’s diary. Leningradka Savicheva Tatyana began to lead him at the age of 12 years. It was not published, because it consists of only nine terrible records about how the family members of this girl in Leningrad at that time consistently died. Tanya herself also failed to survive. This notebook as an argument accusing fascism was presented at the Nuremberg trials.
This document is located today in the Museum of the History of the Hero City, and a copy is stored in the window of the memorial of the aforementioned Piskaryovskoye Cemetery, where 570 thousand Leningraders were buried during the blockade of those who died of starvation or bombing from 1941 to 1943, as well as in Moscow on Poklonnaya Hill .
A hand losing power due to hunger wrote sparingly, unevenly. Struck by suffering, the child’s soul was no longer capable of living emotions. The girl only recorded the terrible events of her life - "death visits" to her family's house. Tanya wrote that all the Savichevs died. However, she never found out that not all died, their race continued. Sister Nina was rescued and taken out of the city. She returned in 1945 to Leningrad, to her native home, and found Tanya’s notebook among the stucco, shards and bare walls. Brother Misha also recovered after being seriously wounded at the front. The girl herself was discovered by employees of the sanitary teams who went around the city’s houses. She lost consciousness from hunger. She, barely alive, was evacuated to the village of Shatki. Here, many orphans became stronger, but Tanya did not recover. For two years, doctors fought for her life, but the girl still died. She died in 1944, July 1.