Blood Red Army

by David Bishop

  Life inside the blockade was unlike anything I had been told or read about. Back in Moscow we were regaled with tales of Leningrad's patriotic resistance, the people's resolute refusal to submit to the merciless Nazis. I quickly found the reality of the situation to be a different matter altogether.

  Leningrad was a city entombed by cold and snow and ice. When the German artillery was not pounding the already devastated buildings and spires, and when the German bombers were not unloading black clouds of bombs upon the people, Leningrad was as quiet as a graveyard. Stranger still was the absence of smells in the air outdoors, beyond the acrid fumes from fires caused by the most recent incendiaries to be dropped on the city.

  The electricity supply was fitful at best. The trams and buses that had been the city's public transportation system no longer ran, because the fuel they required was needed elsewhere. The few vehicles I saw moving on the icy streets were freshly-built tanks on their way to the front line, the bare, unpainted metal glinting in the weak winter sunlight. People did move about, but slowly and painfully. The dead and the dying were dragged around on children's wooden sleds. Stiff, frozen corpses littered the streets and walkways.

  The only time I saw people gathered was in queues. They waited patiently with buckets to fetch fresh water, dragging it up through a hole cut into the frozen surface of the Little Neva tributary. They waited patiently to collect their meagre daily ration of bread, although calling it bread was quite a stretch of the imagination. A Party official took me inside one of the bakeries where I saw what was used to make the loaves. Flour was in such short supply that the dough had to be bulked out with anything available: edible cellulose, sweepings from the floor, crumblings of cattle cake and even sawdust. It would have turned my stomach had I anything left in my gut to be expelled.

  Few people dared stop moving while outside on the frozen streets. The German bombardment was an almost constant background noise, accompanied by the listless wailing of air raid sirens and our own anti-aircraft batteries firing along the city's perimeter, trying to defend the people within. Only those beyond hope ever stopped or rested out of doors in Leningrad. To sit down was to admit defeat, to let death claim you with its cold, fatal embrace. Stop to rest and you would surely perish, one way or another. So the people stayed on their feet, kept moving, defiant to the last. Thousands died every day.

  I wore the uniform of a soldier and received the rations of a soldier, twice that given to those citizens who merely survived. Workers in the munitions factories were given a little more than their dependants, but it was never enough. As long as I live, I shall never complain of being hungry again. Those who did not survive that winter in Leningrad will never know the true meaning of hunger. I heard tell of people taking the most desperate measures to sustain themselves. Some ate soap and linseed oil, while artists consumed their paints.

  I never saw a pet in all the time I was inside the blockaded area. Dogs and cats had long since disappeared, culled for their precious flesh, consumed in clandestine feasts. Starvation was claiming more people a day than the German bombardments. Convalescent hospitals known as statsionar were opened to treat the starving who suffered from muscular dystrophy.

  Even with my extra rations, by the end of February my once-snug uniform was more like a khaki sack hanging from my body. With each passing week I could see another of my ribs jutting out. But I rarely took my clothes off anymore, preferring to keep them on and stay warm.

  I counted myself fortunate not to be sent directly to one of the front line positions outside the city. I supposed my father's position within the Party back in Moscow had no small role in keeping me within the city. Life was no safer there than at the front lines, but it was certainly that little bit more comfortable.

  I was assigned to be kommisar for a handful of local air defence units, known as the Mestnaia Protivo-Vozdushnaia Oborona, or MPVO for short. With all able-bodied men already in the Red Army or a people's militia unit, defending the city from German aerial attacks was the job of local women. They fought proudly and needed little encouragement from me. The biggest struggle was keeping them awake through the night. Most of the women in the MPVO worked fourteen or fifteen hour shifts in a factory before reporting for duty with their anti-aircraft unit. But they knew all too well it was a life or death struggle, where every plane that got through cost lives. My morale boosting skills were of little use to them.

  While working with the MPVO units I was billeted at the home of a local Party official, Boris Romandonovsky. The tiny rooms stank of boiled cabbage and despair, but at least they smelled of something compared with the antiseptic cold outside. Boris tried to insist that I take his bed while he and his wife slept round the burzhuiki stove in the larger room of their dark, dingy apartment, but I refused to steal away one of the few comforts left to them.

  All of the windows in the apartment had long since been blown out by nearby explosions, and shutters made of precious wood were secured across the gaping holes. It was safer this way, Boris told me, pointing out how flying glass had wounded the upholstery of their few pieces of padded furniture. But he did admit finding it harder now to read his copy of Leningradskaia Pravda in the darkness. Somehow the city's daily newspaper kept going, having only missed one edition since the siege began, when the last hydroelectric power station closed.

  Boris and his wife Raisa thought themselves fortunate since none of their children were still left in the city, having used Party connections to get their young daughters out in an airlift the previous autumn. To repay their hospitality, I used to take home part of my rations for them, such as the "soldier's sandwich": a smear of fat spread across a slice of black bread. In return Raisa insisted I drink some of the pine needle broth she made to ward off scurvy, while her husband gave me first choice from the triangles of bread sprinkled sparingly with sugar crystals, a delicacy citizens jokingly called "blockade pastries". But most days we survived on kasha: a porridge made of grain, closer to soup than cereal.

  On the first day of March, Boris suggested I accompany him to a special event being staged for important Party members within the blockade. "It is a celebration of our triumph over adversity," he said, nervous hands clasping the fur-lined flaps of his ushanka hat. "The students of our finest ballet school will be dancing tonight. You must come, Kommisar Zunetov, it is an important event!"

  I tried to tell Boris I had no interest in the ballet and less in watching some unfortunate children performing like trained seals for Party officials, but he kept insisting. When I refused to accompany him, he started crying and fled the tiny apartment. I asked Raisa for the reasons behind his outburst.

  "If you do not attend, it will be taken as a personal slight to the head of provisions for the entire Leningrad front. He is patron of the ballet school and wishes to be recognised as such." She too was close to tears by this point. "If you do not attend, this man will lose face and he will blame Boris..."

  I shook my head, unable to comprehend what kind of madness put the lives of good, decent citizens in jeopardy because I refused to attend a ballet recital in the middle of a war zone. Boris and Raisa had been so good to me, I could not contemplate them suffering on my behalf. I found Boris weeping on the staircase outside and told him I had changed my mind. That set him off again, but now his tears were those of gratitude. I made a vow to write to my father and tell him of this insanity. But I never kept that vow.

  That night I accompanied Boris to the auditorium where the entertainment was to take place. The grand building had sustained much damage on the outside, but its interior was remarkably intact. Row upon row of seats stood empty, for there was no public audience to come and see the event. Only the first two rows were occupied with the round-faced members from the Upravlenie Po Delam Iskusstv Arts Council and Party representatives congratulating themselves on surviving another day inside the blockade. Each of them stank of body odour, poorly masked by talcum powder and expensive eau de toilette. Boris escorted me to a vacant sea
t, carefully making sure my presence was duly noted by a corpulent man incongruously clad in full evening dress. I noticed that this was the first overweight person I had seen since arriving in Leningrad. Looking at the other guests, I realised he was merely the fattest among the many well-fed officials attending the performance. Each of them had a fur coat draped across their lap like a blanket and they took frequent sips from exquisitely engraved hip flasks. The sight of such largesse in a city where most people were starving to death sickened me.

  Once I was seated, a signal was given and the curtains covering the stage were drawn aside. A polite ripple of applause passed through the audience as an obese woman waddled out on stage, wearing what looked like a new and extremely expensive full-length dress of crimson velvet with golden braiding. Her crudely dyed red hair was piled atop her head and kept in place with a selection of pearl-tipped silver pins, while her rotund face was grotesquely made up with rouge and mascara. Several chins wobbled obscenely beneath her tiny, cruel mouth, while her lips glistened a bright red beneath the stage lights.

  "Good evening and welcome to this first performance of the new season," she announced grandly, soliciting more applause from the sycophantic audience. "Tonight you shall savour the finest ballet my beautiful students can deliver. Every step they dance will be a testament to the efforts of you all to save this glorious city from the deprivations of the Nazi invaders. Now, let the dancing begin!" She bowed low to the audience, displaying far too much dÈcolletage, then waddled back into the wings, accompanied by further rapturous applause.

  What followed next was unspeakable. A selection of anorexic children attempted to dance for us, performing weak imitations of ballet classics, every movement underscoring their exhaustion and malnutrition. Even from my seat at the side of the theatre I could see the blue spots of scurvy on each girl's legs, while their bodies were more like pale sacks filled with bones. Most pathetic of all was the sole male dancer, who had to be supported as he tried to glide across the stage, held upright by one of the ballerinas. Each sequence was accompanied by music from a record played on a gramophone at the side of the stage by the obese hostess. She made great play of her efforts to turn the handle and kept the records turning, urging her students on to greater heights. After the first few dances I could not bring myself to watch, preferring to cover my eyes than bear witness to this outrageous exhibition.

  The audience endured forty minutes of this so-called entertainment before the curtains were drawn once more and I found myself joining in the applause - not because I wanted to thank the torturer who had made the children dance for us, but for the bravery of the students themselves. To my amazement, the hostess came out and mingled with the audience, telling them she had a particular treat in store for the second half. I struggled to stop myself from shouting out in protest. Surely this callous sow could not imagine her students would be able to do any more? But she was too busy accepting the fawning congratulations of the arts council members. The bloated woman brushed away a tear of gratitude while loudly telling us all how much she loved and adored the children, and how it was only her efforts that had kept them from starvation during this past winter.

  When I thought I could take no more of this display, a bell was sounded and the audience returned to their seats. I remained at one side, ready to walk out if this madness went on for much longer. The second act opened with a pathetic parody of Swan Lake, the single male dancer trying and failing to fulfil his role. When it finally became too much for him, the lad staggered offstage and the sound of pitiful retching could be heard over the scratchy music emitted by the gramophone. Unable to stand by doing nothing any longer, I went backstage and found the boy collapsed in the wings, a puddle of blood-streaked grey vomit beside him on the floor. When I picked the lad up and carried him out on stage, so the audience members could see the price of their entertainment, his body was hardly any weight in my arms.

  The hostess raced over to me, her face flushed red. "What are you doing to my poor soloist?" she demanded.

  "You did this," I snarled. "Look at him! He is dying of hunger and you make him dance for our pleasure! What kind of sadist are you?" The audience gasped at my words but I did not care, spitting a mouthful of obscenities at this vile creature and her mockery of concern. The boy in my arms went into spasm his body twitching uncontrollably while his face twisted in a deathlike rictus of agonised pain. I crouched down and laid the boy on the centre of the stage, trying to sooth his spasms away. "See what you've done?"

  Several of the ballet students ran out and tended to the boy while I shifted my attention back to the woman responsible, calling her every curse word I could remember. I sensed members of the audience moving to pull us apart, but they were too slow to stop what happened next. The hostess staggered back a step at my verbal onslaught, then slapped weakly at my face. Unable to control my fury, I lashed out at her, my fist sending her spinning on the stage on which she had forced the children to dance.

  Powerful arms dragged me away from the sobbing woman, while members of the audience shouted for my head. I was wrenched down from the stage into the audience area, where several well-aimed kicks struck me in the chest and groin. A thunderous voice stopped the punishment and my attackers parted to let the corpulent man in evening dress approach me. He glared down, his face quivering with rage, fists clenching and unclenching.

  "How dare you! Your father may be an important man in Moscow, but that will not save you! I will see you executed for this, you crazed svolotch!" He lashed out with his immaculately polished shoe, kicking me full in the face.

  I rolled over on to my back, blood gushing from my broken nose. A familiar face appeared overhead, looking mournfully at me. It was Boris, his eyes aghast. "Kommisar Zunetov, what have you done? Don't you know who that woman is?"

  I shook my head.

  He whispered the answer to me. "She is Lidiia Semenovna Tager, the wife of the head of provisions for the entire Leningrad front!"

  "I'm sorry," I whispered.

  "You should tell her that, if they will let you."

  "No, Boris, I'm apologising to you. I will not suffer alone for what I've done."

  Two days later I was marched into a snow-filled courtyard, my hands secured behind my back with a leather belt, my face blotched with blue and purple bruises from the beatings I had received as part of my punishment. My heart sank at the sight of Boris and Raisa already waiting for me in that pitiless square. The couple were bound and gagged, their faces betraying utter terror. Raisa's clothes were torn and tattered, mute evidence of indignities and violations inflicted upon her elsewhere, while her husband looked like a broken man, all resistance already crushed out of him by our captors. Boris and his wife resembled empty husks, waiting to be swept away by the winds of fate.

  I was shoved across the courtyard to join the couple against the far wall. I tried to whisper an apology, but they gave no sign of hearing my words. A gag was shoved into my mouth and secured behind my head. When I attempted to resist, the butt of a rifle was cracked across my face, splitting the skin open across one cheek. Blood ran red down my face, briefly warming the skin. A firing squad formed on the opposite side of the courtyard, each man armed with a Moisin carbine rifle. I shook my head at them, trying to plead for the lives of Boris and Raisa, but nobody paid any attention to my grunts of protest. The firing squad members checked that their weapons were loaded and ready, but once that task was completed the half dozen men stood and waited with bored expressions on their faces.

  What a stupid way to die, I thought. I never expected to survive the Great Patriotic War, but to be executed for punching a fat ballet teacher - it would have been comical if not for the fact I had condemned two other people to die with me. I looked towards the sky, trying to savour what I thought would be the last thing I ever saw. Instead, my attention was caught by a pair of wooden shutters set high into the wall above the firing squad. The shutters were pushed open from inside to reveal an audience of two for our
execution: the head of provisions and his bloated, self-important wife. They glared down at us, the woman sporting a black eye from my blow. At least I had left her something to remember me by, I decided bleakly. Her husband cleared his throat and the firing squad raised their rifles, took careful aim, and fired.

  Boris and Raisa were thrown back against the wall, and then they slumped to the snow-covered ground, their bodies twitching and jerking. Boris stopped moving after a few seconds but Raisa did not die so quickly. One of the soldiers stepped closer and finished her off with another shot. I was left unhurt and unharmed, unable to comprehend what had happened. I glared up at the obese pair who had watched this grisly spectacle, my eyes asking the question the gag in my mouth prevented me from speaking out loud.

  "While your father remains in a position of power, I cannot risk having you executed by firing squad," the head of provisions said sourly. "Instead you will be stripped of position within the Party and all the privileges that it brings. You have been reassigned to the front line, where you will join the penal company with the highest mortality rate inside the blockade. I doubt you will survive more than a day with Captain Alexandr Brodsky's shtrafroty."

  I looked at the bodies on either side of me, my eyes drawn to the blood already freezing in the snow beneath them. Tager noticed my discomfit.

  "Since my wife could not have the pleasure of seeing you executed for your attack upon her, I suggested she think of another way to punish you. I must confess that her solution was quite ingenious. Don't you agree?"

  I tried to howl a protest but the gag in my mouth reduced my words to the grunts and sobs of a wounded animal. Tager gestured to the soldier who had finished off Raisa. He smashed the butt of his rifle into my face, sending me sprawling backwards. My skull crashed into cold stone and darkness claimed me.