that it would be all right in the end. But what a change all the same when February came and the Ice Road began to function properly! Those tremendous parcels that
started arriving from all over the country—honey and butter, and ham and
sausages! Still, our troubles are not at an end. This shelling can really be very upsetting. I was in the Nevsky once when a shell landed close by. And ten yards
away from me was a man whose head was cut clean off by a shell splinter. It was
horrible. I saw him make his last two steps already with his head off—and a bloody mess all round before he collapsed. I vomited right there and then, and was quite ill for the rest of the day—though I had already seen many terrible things before. I
shall never forget the night when a children's hospital was hit by an oil bomb; many children were killed, and the whole house was blazing, and some perished in the
flames. It's bad for one's nerves to see such things happen; our ambulance services have instructions to wash away blood on the pavement as quickly as possible after a shell has landed.
From that visit to Leningrad I brought back countless impressions of human suffering and human endurance. The front round Leningrad had by this time become stabilised, and
Leningrad, though still surrounded, was confidently watching the Germans in full retreat along most of the Russo-German front, and waiting for its own turn to be finally
liberated. Although there was no longer any famine, life was still desperately hard for many people, not least the men and women of the Kirov Works, which were almost in the front line. Here, as well as in another important plant, I was not only shown what life was like then, but also told what it had been like during the famine. Here are two accounts.
First a visit to an important factory making optical instruments:
Here most of the smaller wooden buildings had been used up for fuel during the previous two winters. It was a large factory building, the outer brick walls of which were marked by shell splinters. Comrade Semyonov, the director of the factory, with a strong hard face, and wearing a plain khaki tunic to which were pinned the Leningrad medal and the Order of Lenin, was a typical Soviet executive to look at and listen to—very precise and to the point. In his office was a collection of the various things the factory was now making— bayonets, detonators and large optical lenses, and on the wall were portraits of Stalin and Zhdanov... Altogether, I had noticed in Leningrad a certain aloofness towards Moscow, a feeling that although this was part of the whole show, it was also, in a sense, a separate show, one in which Leningrad had survived largely through its own stupendous efforts.
Semyonov said that this was the largest factory in the Soviet Union for optical
instruments... "But during the first days of the war the bulk of our optical equipment was evacuated east, because this was considered one of the key factories for defence. One couldn't afford to take any risks with it. Early in 1942 we had a second evacuation, and those of the skilled workers who hadn't gone in the first evacuation were sent away—that is, those who were still alive."
"Already in the first weeks of the war, when most of our equipment and skilled men had been sent away, we started here on an entirely new basis—we started working
exclusively for the Leningrad Front, and we had to make things for which we had the
equipment— and there wasn't much of it. Our people had no experience in this kind of work. Even so, we started making things our soldiers needed most. But Leningrad has a great industrial tradition, a great industrial culture, and our hand-grenades and anti-tank-mine detonators turned out to be the best of any made. We made hundreds of thousands of these... Throughout the blockade we have also been repairing small arms, rifles and machine-guns; and now we are also working again on optical instruments—among them
submarine periscopes. For our Baltic Fleet isn't idle, as you know..."
I asked Semyonov to tell me something about life at the factory during the hunger
blockade. He was silent for a few seconds... "Frankly," he said, "I don't like to talk about it. It's a very bitter memory... By the time the blockade started half our people had been evacuated or had gone into the army, so we were left here with about 5,000. I must say it was difficult at first to get used to the bombing, and if anyone says it doesn't frighten him, don't you believe it! Yet, though it frightened people, it also aroused their frantic anger against the Germans. When they started bombing us in a big way in October 1941 our
workers fought for the factory more than they did for their own houses. One night we had to deal with 300 incendiaries on the factory grounds alone. Our people were putting the fires out with a sort of concentrated rage and fury. They had realised by then that they were in the front line—that was all. No more shelters. Only small children were taken to shelters, and old grannies. And then, one day in December, in twenty degrees of frost, we had all our windows blown out by a bomb, and I thought to myself: 'No, we really can't go on. Not till the spring. We can't go on in this temperature, and without light, without water, and almost without food.' And yet, somehow—we didn't stop. A kind of instinct told us we mustn't—that it would be worse than suicide, and a little like treason. And sure enough, within thirty-six hours we were working again—working in altogether hellish
conditions, with eight degrees of frost in the workshops, and fourteen degrees of frost in this office where you are sitting now. Oh, we had stoves of sorts, little stoves that warmed the air a couple of feet around them. But still our people worked. And, mind you, they were hungry, terribly hungry..."
Semyonov paused for a moment and there was a frown on his face. "Yes," he said, "to this day I cannot quite understand it. I don't quite understand how it was possible to have all that will-power, that strength of mind. Many of them, hardly able to walk with hunger, would drag themselves to the factory every day, eight, ten, even twelve kilometres. For there were no trams. We used all sorts of childish expedients to keep the work going.
When there were no batteries, we used bicycle pedals to keep the lathes turning."
"Somehow, people knew when they were going to die. I remember one of our elder
workers staggering into this office and saying to me: 'Comrade Chief, I have a request to make. I am one of your old workers, and you have always been a good friend to me, and I know you will not refuse. I am not going to bother you again. I know that today or
tomorrow I shall die. My family are in a very poor way— very weak. They won't have
the strength to manage a funeral. Will you be a friend and have a coffin made for me, and have it sent to my family, so that they don't have the extra worry of trying to get a coffin?
You know how difficult it is to get one.' That happened during the blackest days of
December or January. And such things happened day after day. How many workers came
into this office saying: 'Chief, I shall be dead today or tomorrow.' We would send them to the factory hospital, but they always died. All that was possible and impossible to eat, people ate. They ate cattle-cake, and mineral oils—we used to boil them first—and
carpenter's glue. People tried to sustain themselves on hot water and yeast. Out of the 5,000 people we had here, several hundred died. Many of them died right here... Many a man would drag himself to the factory, stagger in and die... Everywhere there were
corpses. But some died at home, and died together with the rest of their family and, in the circumstances, it was difficult to find out anything definite... And since there was no transport, we weren't usually able to send people round to enquire. This went on till about February 15. After that, rations were increased and the death-rate dropped. Today it hurts me to talk about these things..."
One of the Leningrad memories that stands out most clearly in my mind is the afternoon I spent in September 1943 at the great Kirov Works, where work continued even then
under almost constant shelling from the German lines barely two mil
es away. For here, even in 1943, one had a glimpse of Leningrad's darkest and grimmest days; to the Kirov workers these were not a memory of the past; they were continuing to live here through a peculiar kind of hell. Yet to these people, to be a Kirov worker, and to hold out to the end, had become like a title of nobility. The workers here were not soldiers; sixty-nine per cent were women and girls—mostly young girls. They knew that this was as bad as
the front; in a way it was worse: you did not know the thrill of direct retaliation. The great revolutionary tradition of the Putilov, now the Kirov Works, had much to do with it.
The day before, in a children's rest home in Kamenny Island, I had talked to a girl called Tamara Turanova:
She was a little girl of fifteen, very pale, thin and delicate, obviously run down. On her little black frock was pinned the green-ribboned medal of Leningrad:
"Where did you get that?" I asked. A faint smile appeared on her pale little face. "I don't know what he was called," she said. "An uncle with spectacles came to the works one day and gave me this medal." "What works?" "Oh, the Kirov Works, of course," she said.
"Does your father work there, too?" "No," she said, "father died in the hungry year, died on the 7th of January. I have worked at the Kirov Works since I was fourteen, so I
suppose that's why they gave me this medal. We're not far away from the front." "Doesn't it frighten you to work there?" She screwed up her little face. "No, not really; one gets used to it. When a shell whistles, it means it's high up; it's only when it begins to sizzle that you know there's going to be trouble. Accidents do happen, of course, happen very often; sometimes things happen every day. Only last week we had an accident; a shell landed in my workshop and many were wounded, and two Stakhanovite girls were
burned to death." She said it with terrible simplicity and almost with the suggestion that it wouldn't have been such a serious matter if two Stakhanovite girls hadn't lost their lives.
"You wouldn't like to change over to another factory?" I asked. "No," she said, shaking her head. "I am a Kirov girl, and my father was a Putilov man, and really the worst is over now, so we may as well stick it to the end." And one could feel that she meant it, though it was only too clear what terrible nervous strain that frail little body of hers had suffered. "And your mother?" I asked. "She died before the war," said the girl. "But my big brother is in the army, on the Leningrad Front, and he writes to me often, very often, and three months ago he and several of his comrades came to visit us at the Kirov
Works." Her little pale face brightened at the thought of it, and, looking out of the window of the rest home at the golden autumn trees, she said: "You know, it's good to be here for a little while."
The next day, after driving down the Peterhof Road through the heavily-battered southern outskirts of Leningrad, with the German lines running along the other side of the Uritsk inlet of the Gulf of Finland, I arrived at the Kirov Works, where I was received by
Comrade Puzyrev, the director, a relatively young man with a strong, but careworn face...
"Well," he said, "you are certainly finding us working in unusual conditions. What we have here isn't what is normally meant by the Kirov Plant... Before the war we had over 30,000 workers; now we have only a small fraction of these ... and sixty-nine per cent of our workers are female. Hardly any women worked here before the war. We then made
turbines, tanks, guns; we made tractors, and supplied the greater part of the equipment for building the Moscow-Volga canal. We built quantities of machinery for the Navy...
Before this war started, we began to make tanks in a very big way, as well as tank and aircraft engines. Practically all this production of equipment proper has been moved to the east. Now we repair diesels and tanks, but our main output is ammunition, and some small arms... "
Puzyrev then spoke of the early days of the war at the Kirov works. It was a story of that lutte à outrance so typical of the people and workers of Leningrad. Like one man they reacted to the German invasion, but the highest pitch of self-sacrifice was reached as a result of the "Leningrad in danger" appeal made on August 21 by Voro-shilov, Zhdanov and Popkov.
"The workers of the Kirov Plant," Puzyrev said, "were in reserved occupations, and hardly anybody was subject to mobilisation. Yet no sooner had the Germans invaded us than everybody without exception volunteered for the front. If we had wanted to, we
could have sent 25,000 people; we let only 9,000 or 10,000 go.
Already in June 1941 they formed themselves into what was to become the famous Kirov Division. Although they had done some training before the war, they couldn't be
considered fully-trained soldiers, but their drive, their guts were tremendous. They wore the uniform of the Red Army, but they were in fact part of the opol-cheniye, except that they were rather better trained than other opolcheniye units. Several such workers'
divisions were formed in Leningrad... and many tens of thousands of them went out from here to meet the Germans, to stop them at any price. They fought at Luga, and Novgorod and Pushkin, and finally at Uritsk, where, after one of the grimmest rearguard actions of this war, our men managed to stop the Germans, just in the nick of time... The fight put up by our Workers' Division and by the people of Leningrad who went out to stop them was absolutely decisive... It is no secret—a large proportion of the Workers' Divisions never came back..."
One felt that Puzyrev regretted at heart that such good industrial material should have had to be sacrificed on the battlefield; but, clearly, in 1941, when it was touch-and-go for both Moscow and Leningrad, such fine points had to be put aside; he was glad, all the same, that when the worst was over, many of the survivors had been taken out of the army and put back into industry.
He then spoke of the evacuation of the Kirov Plant. Before the German ring had closed, it had been possible to evacuate only one complete workshop—525 machine tools and
2,500 people. But nothing more could be sent east till the spring.
"However, our most highly skilled workers, who were badly needed in Siberia and the Urals, were evacuated by air, together with their families. They were flown to Tikhvin, but after the Germans had taken Tikhvin, we had to fly them to other airfields, and from there the people had to walk to the nearest railway station, walk through the snow, in the middle of a bitter winter, often dozens and dozens of kilometres... Already in the early part of the winter a lot of equipment from Kharkov, Kiev and other places, and also some from Moscow, had reached the Urals, and our skilled people were badly needed to handle the stuff and to organise production. Chelia-binsk, for example, had never made tanks before, and our people were needed for starting this large-scale production of tanks in the shortest possible time... We were then in the middle of that most critical transition period when industry in the west had ceased to function, and had not yet started up in the east...
The people who left here in October were already working at full speed in their new
place, 2,000 kilometres away, by December! ... And in what conditions all this was done!
Trains carrying the equipment were attacked from the air, and so were the transport
planes taking the skilled Leningrad workers and their families from Leningrad.
Fortunately the percentage of transport planes shot down was not high. But the flying had to be done mostly at night, in very difficult conditions..."
Puzyrev's story of the Kirov Plant during the worst months of the famine was much the same as the story told me by Semyonov, the director of the optical instruments plant:
"Those were terrible days," he said. "On December 15 everything came to a standstill.
There was no fuel, no electric current, no food, no tram-cars, no water, nothing.
Production in Leningrad practically ceased. We were to remain in this terrible condition till the 1st of April. It is true that food began to come in in February across the Ladoga Ice Road. But we needed another month before we could start any kind of regular output at t
he Kirov Works. But even during the worst hungry period we did what we could... We repaired guns, and our foundry was kept going, though only in a small way. It felt as if the mighty Kirov Works had been turned into a village smithy. People were terribly cold and terribly hungry. Many of our people died during those days, and it was chiefly our best people who died— highly skilled workers who had reached a certain age when the
body can no longer resist such hardships...
"As I said before, there was no water and no electric current. All we had was a small pump which was connected with the sea down there; that was all the water supply we
had. Throughout the winter —from December to March—the whole of Leningrad used
snow for putting out incendiaries... The only very large fire was that of the Gostiny Dvor.
[The famous shopping arcade in the Nevsky Prospect.]
Here, at the Kirov Works, not a single workshop was destroyed by fire.
"People were so faint with hunger that we had to organise hostels, so that they could live right here. We authorised others who lived at home to come only twice a week... At the end of November, we had to call a meeting to announce the reduction of the bread ration from 400 to 250 grams for workers, and to 125 grams for the others —and very little else.
They took it calmly, though to many it was like a death sentence... "
And Puzyrev then said that the soldiers on the Leningrad Front asked that their own
rations be reduced, so that so drastic a reduction in the rations of the Leningrad citizens could be avoided; but the High Command decided that the soldiers were receiving just a bare minimum for carrying on—which, at that time, was 350 grams of bread, and not
much else.
"We tried to keep people going by making a sort of yeast soup, with a little soya added. It wasn't much better, really than drinking hot water, but it gave people the illusion of having 'eaten' something. .. A very large number of our people died. So many died, and transport was so difficult, that we decided to have our own graveyard right here... And yet, although people were dying of hunger, there was not a single serious incident...
Russia at war Page 40
