The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  Within hours the units of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts were joining hands—the basic blockade of Leningrad had been broken. The first meeting of Soviet troops came in the morning near Workers’ Settlement No. 1, about five miles southeast of Shlisselburg. There at 9:30 A.M. Simonyak’s 123rd Rifle Brigade met a unit of the 1240th Regiment of the 372nd Division from the Volkhov front.5

  It was dark before Shlisselburg fell. There had been fifteen thousand people in the old fortress city before the war. Only a few hundred were left. The rest had been shipped to Germany, died of hunger or had been executed by the Germans. Oreshek, the hard little nut, the fort which had held out for five hundred days, stood like a battered battleship just off the Shlisselburg piers. Sayanov spent a night at Oreshek, interviewing the defenders. Water trickled down the thick walls. The air was dank. A little oil lamp stood on the table. “It’s very gloomy,” Sayanov said. “It reminds me of one of the cells where they held the revolutionaries.”

  “It is,” the commander replied.

  All Leningrad was waiting. Each evening for days the people had waited for the “last-minute news at 11 P.M.” Would the blockade be lifted? When?

  All day on the eighteenth rumors ran through the city. Then just before 11 P.M. came the communiqué, read in the solemn tones of Yuri Levitan, Moscow’s No. 1 announcer:

  “Troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts have joined together and at the same time have broken the blockade of Leningrad.”6

  Vera Inber had no night pass, but she had to get to Radio House. She had to, and she feared she would be too late. Radio House was a long way from Aptekarsky Island. But her fears were groundless. No passes were needed. Everyone was on the street. Leningrad radio stayed on the air until 3 A.M. For once there was no plan, no censor. People spoke. Music played. Poems were read. Speeches were made.

  “This snowy moonlit night of January 18-19 will never vanish from the memory of those who experienced it,” Vera Inber told the people of Leningrad. “Some of us are older and others are younger. All of us will experience happiness and grief in our lives. But this happiness, the happiness of liberated Leningrad, we will never forget.”

  Vsevolod Vishnevsky was at the command post of the fleet artillery when the communiqué came in. He promptly jotted in his diary: “Seventeen months of blockade, of torment, of expectation. But we held out! Now there is a holiday in our street!”

  Pavel Luknitsky was in Shlisselburg. At three minutes to 1 A.M., January 19, less than two hours after the victory communiqué, he managed to get a direct military telegraph line to Moscow and sent off the first story to the Moscow press about the lifting of the blockade. A scoop.

  Olga Berggolts wrote a poem:

  My dear ones, my far ones, have you heard?

  The cursed circle is broken. . . .

  But she warned:

  The blockade is not yet completely broken.

  Farewell, my loved ones. I am going

  To my ordinary, dangerous work

  In the name of the new life of Leningrad.

  It was true. The flags went up in the streets, red flags everywhere. Girls danced down the pavement. They spoke to everyone. They threw their arms around soldiers. It made Vishnevsky think of the February Revolution. In the Radio House studios everyone kissed each other—Olga Berggolts, Boris Likharev, Yelena Vechtomova, Director Yasha Babushkin.

  The siege had lasted 506 days. But, though the Germans had been pushed back, they still sat on Leningrad’s doorstep. Their guns still raked the city.

  On February 7 Pavel Luknitsky went to the Finland Station. Shell holes gaped. The train shed was a tangle of steel and girders. But the platform was decorated with red flags and bunting. At 10:09 A.M. a light locomotive, No. L-1208, pulling two passenger cars and a string of freight cars, chuffed into the station. It had come from the new line connecting Leningrad with the “mainland” via the new Shlisselburg bridge across the Neva and Vol-khovstroi.7 A band struck up. The crowd cheered. Mayor Popkov spoke. So did Party Secretary Kuznetsov. Just before noon the meeting ended and the train dispatcher snouted: “Train No. 719, Leningrad-Volkhovstroi, Engineer Fedorov, is prepared to depart!”

  It was the 526th day of the blockade. Train service had begun again by an indirect, roundabout way, over temporary bridges and running a murderous corridor of Nazi artillery fire. The blockade was lifted, but only partially. Most Leningraders thought the full and final end of the siege was at hand. They were wrong. Many days, many weeks, many months, many lives lay between that February day and the ultimate freeing of the city.

  * * *

  1 There is disagreement among Soviet witnesses on this. Yuri Alyanskii, who was present, contends no German shells fell in the city because of precautionary fire by Soviet batteries. (Zvezda, No. 11, November, 1961, p. 195.) V. M. Gankevich says Ferch ordered his guns to fire but they were immediately silenced. (Gankevich, op. cit., p. 80.) N. N. Zhdanov, then one of Leningrad’s artillery specialists, says the Germans were kept from opening fire by Govorov’s counterbattery barrage. (N. N. Zhdanov, Ognevoi Shchit Leningrada, Moscow, 1961, p. 76.) Neither Inber, Vishnevsky nor Bogdanov-Berezovsky mentions shelling. All were present. (Inber, Izbranniye Proizvedeniya, Vol. III Leningrad, 1958, pp. 347–348; Vishnevsky, op. cit., p. 598; Bogdanov-Berezovsky, V Gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny, Leningrad, 1959, p. 146.) General Friedrich Ferch was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. In 1955 he was turned over to Western Germany and soon thereafter released, (Istoriya VOVSS, Vol. III, p. 128.)

  2 N.Z., p. 427. Barbashin gives the date as December 2. Moscow ordered preparations completed by December 31. (Barbashin, op. cit., p. 237.)

  3 Admiral Kuznetsov, who heartily hated both Mekhlis and the other police general, G. I. Kulik, characterized Mekhlis as “a most unsuitable man for the role of representative of the center at the front. Possessed of wide authority, he always tried to supersede the commander and do everything his own way, but at the same time taking no responsibility for the outcome of the military operation.” This trait was first noted during the winter war with Finland in 1939–40. Mekhlis was sent to the Ninth Soviet Army as Stalin’s representative. Mekhlis removed dozens of officers and when the 44th Division fell into Finnish encirclement, demanded that its commander, A. I. Vinogradov, be shot. Vinogradov was arrested but escaped execution. At the post-mortem on the Finnish war held in April, 1940, Stalin told Mekhlis, according to Kuznetsov, “You, being right on the spot, had the habit of depositing the command in your pocket and doing with it as you pleased.” Mekhlis took this as a compliment, Kuznetsov contends, and during World War II continued to act in this style. In the first few months of war Mekhlis headed the Army political propaganda organ and was described by an associate, Lev Kopilev, as “a man remarkably energetic, remarkably vigorous and even more decisive but even less competent, the master of varied but superficial knowledge and self-confident to the point of willfulness.” Mekhlis was removed from his post as Deputy Commissar of Defense, reduced in rank and reprimanded by Stalin for his role in the Soviet loss of the Crimea in the spring of 1942. Mekhlis, typically, sought to shift blame to the army and demanded that a new general be appointed. Stalin accused him of wanting a “Hindenburg” to command the Soviet troops. Moscow had no Hindenburgs at its disposal, Stalin said, and chargéd that Mekhlis was just trying to evade responsibility for his errors. He was formally reprimanded for crude interference in the functions of the front commander and for giving orders which did not conform to the military situation. Mekhlis tried to implicate Naval Commander A. S. Frolov of the Kerch naval base in the disaster and threatened to have Frolov shot if Admiral Kuznetsov did not bring him up on summary court-martial. Admiral Kuznetsov refused. Despite all this, Mekhlis was back in Stalin’s favor within a few months and was named Political Commissar to the Bryansk front in 1943, serving with General I. V. Boldin, one of the ablest Soviet commanders. Soviet planes carried out an attack on advanced German positions on August 24, 19
43. Mekhlis became convinced the planes were attacking Soviet, not Nazi, lines. He ordered the squadron grounded and sent before a military tribunal for execution. Only the intervention of an officer who had witnessed the successful air attack on the Nazi lines saved the airmen. (Shtemenko, op. cit., pp. 18, 50, 55, Kuznetsov, Nakanune, pp. 243–244; VOVSS, p. 156; Lev Kopolev, in Literaturnoye Nasledstvo Sovetskikh Pisatelei Na Frontakh Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny, Vol. I, p. 535; A. P. Teremov, Pylayushchiye Berega, Moscow, 1965, p. 47.)

  4 Marshal Zhukov’s name has vanished from most Soviet accounts of the battle. Marshal Meretskov, with whom Zhukov worked, has written several extensive versions without ever mentioning his name—another instance of Soviet military politics.

  5 General Dukhanov says the first meetings occurred at 11:30 A.M. and 11:45 AM at Workers’ Settlements No. 1 and No. 5 respectively. (Dukhanov, Zvezda, No. 1, January, 1964, p. 156.) Gankevich says the meeting occurred at Settlement No. 1 at 10:30 and at No. 5 at 11:45 AM (Gankevich, op. cit., p. 120.) Several Soviet sources, including N.Z., treat the meeting at Settlement No. 5 as the first. Major Melkoyan of Leningrad’s 123rd Rifles and Major Melnikov of Volkhov’s 372nd drew up an “Act” to commemorate their meeting. They timed it at 9:30 A.M., signed the document and stamped it with the official stamps of the 123rd and 372nd divisions. (Istoriya VOVSS, Vol. Ill, pp. 138-139.)

  6 The Germans lost 13,000 killed, 1,250 in prisoners, in the operation. General Fedyu-ninsky, General Meretskov’s deputy, was seriously wounded by mortar fire January 20, and General Bolotnikov, Leningrad front armored commander, was killed January 22. (Fedyuninsky, op. cit., pp. 140–142.)

  7 One version claims the train brought a load of food from Chelyabinsk. (N.Z., p. 438.)

  49 ♦ The 900 Days Go On

  NOT MUCH WAS CHANGED IN LENINGRAD BY THE JANUARY victory, not as much as the Leningrad survivors had hoped. Danger stayed at their sides. The hardships did not vanish, and the city lived in fear that its tenuous connection with the “mainland” might be broken at any moment.

  That connection was maintained through what quickly came to be called “the corridor of death"—a narrow strip of territory at Shlisselburg where the German guns were only five hundred yards distant. At any moment Leningrad’s link with the rest of Russia might be severed. In fact, only seventy-six trains managed to slip through the corridor of death in February, and the record in March was little better. Again and again heavy German artillery shells blasted the trackage into tangles of torn rails. The guns were mounted on the Sinyavino Heights in full view of the railroad tracks. In eleven months the Germans cut the railroad twelve hundred times. Often the trains could not make their way through for days. Usually passage was attempted at night, running blacked out without signal lights. Not until Special Engine Column No. 48, an elite military rail unit, was set up to handle operations through the corridor of death did service begin to improve. In the end 4,500,000 tons of freight were delivered to Leningrad in 1943, largely in the last months of the year. The cost in lives was heavy.

  The danger which hung over the city lay in the fact that the Nazis hoped to close the narrow corridor and reimpose a full blockade. Not for a moment did this thought leave the minds of General Govorov and Party Secretary Zhdanov. The Germans, to compensate for being driven back a few miles, shelled Leningrad savagely. Not since September 4, 1941, when the first German long-range guns went into action at Tosno, had the shelling been so deadly.

  There was no reason for Leningrad to relax. German strength had shown no sign of weakening, despite the great Russian victory at Stalingrad in January, 1943, in which the Nazi Sixth Army under Field Marshal von Paulus had been shattered with the loss of 300,000 German troops. The Germans still stood on the Pulkovo Heights, where they could see with unaided eyes the Admiralty spire and the upward thrusting needle of the Peter and Paul Fortress. They held all Leningrad’s environs, all the Baltic littoral, all the ancient lands of Novgorod, all Central Russia to within 130 miles of Moscow itself, all the rich lands of the Black Earth belt, all the Ukraine and the Black Sea’s northern shores. Allied operations were moving ahead in Africa, but there was still no second front in Europe. Supplies from the United States to the Soviet Union were still only a trickle. The tide was slowly turning against Hitler, but this was hardly evident to the grim populace of Leningrad.

  The city now bore little resemblance to the majestic capital of prewar 1941. It was more like that Petersburg of which Turgenev wrote: “. . . these empty, wide, gray streets, these gray-white, yellow-gray, gray-pink peeling plaster houses with their deep-set windows—that is our Northern Palmyra. Everything visible from all sides, everything clear, frighteningly sharp and clear, and all sadly sleeping.” The city did not sleep, but it was empty. There were not many more people walking the streets of Leningrad than walked the streets of Turgenev’s Petersburg in i860 or 1870.

  The people were somnambulant, numb from the terrible events which they had survived, uncertain of what lay ahead. The January victory affected their psychology more than their physical beings. The ration was increased to 700 grams of bread a day, almost a loaf and a half, on February 22. That was for workers in heavy industry. The ration for other workers was 600 grams, for employees 500 and for dependents and children 400. No one got fat. Supplies were uncertain. Meat and butter were seldom available. Not until well into 1943 did American canned butter, Spam, powdered eggs, powdered milk and sugar appear. Leningraders were grateful, although as they said, “Russian sugar is sweeter and Russian butter tastes better.”

  The city looked forward to celebrating May Day, 1943, as the first real holiday since the outbreak of war. But it was wet, cold, windy and snowy. The snow began in early morning and continued for hours—clinging, water-laden snow that turned the Champs de Mars, the Summer Gardens and the Smolny grounds into a fairyland of dark columns and snow-bowed branches. There was no parade in Palace Square, but factory workers were given the day off—their first free day since June 22, 1941, except for the winter of 1941–42 when hardly a factory operated for lack of fuel, lack of electricity and the illness and death of the working force. Food stores stayed open, and there was no time off for factories which were engaged in continuous operations, for power and water stations and communications facilities.

  Red flags and bunting decorated the city, along with hundreds of badly painted portraits of Stalin and Zhdanov—more of Zhdanov than of Stalin. There were speeches on the radio. Mayor Peter Popkov spoke. So did Admiral Tributs, commander of the Baltic Fleet, and General Govorov. Govorov declared that the winter offensive had smashed eight German divisions and cost the enemy 100,000 men. But he warned that German reserves were pouring in and “the storming of the city may occur at any moment.”

  The imminence of a new German attack was much in Soviet minds. Party Secretary Zhdanov met a few days later in Smolny with top Party workers. He demanded greater attention to AA defenses and workers battalions. He warned all that Leningrad “is a military city.”

  The warnings of Govorov and Zhdanov were hardly needed. The Germans delivered their own reminder on May Day. There had been heavy shelling of the city for several days, so heavy that the hearing in Vera Inber’s right ear was affected. At 9 A.M. on May Day she was awakened by the rocking of her apartment building. Eight heavy shells, one after the other, landed in the vicinity. Probably, she thought, they were fired from railroad guns. Vishnevsky also attributed the shelling to railroad guns. Everyone in Leningrad had become a specialist in heavy armament by this time.

  One shell hit a trolleycar on the Nevsky, killing almost all the passengers. Another hit the public library. The shelling went on all day at irregular intervals. Each time the German guns opened up, Soviet counterbattery fire suppressed them.

  In the evening Vsevolod Vishnevsky, his wife and Vsevolod Azarov went for a walk in the brooding quiet. The flags fluttered in the occasional wind. They had a holiday meal—a few drinks of vodka, some soup with meat, rice pastries, fruit compote and
tea. (“Luxury!” was Vishnevsky’s comment.) Later he read Tolstoy’s Childhood and Youth, drank a cup of coffee with his wife and talked about the psychology of citizens of a besieged city, the differences in feeling between those in the city and those in the trenches.

  The threat of a new German frontal assault hung over Leningrad. The Nazis were still strong, and just ahead lay the terrible Battle of Kursk, possibly the bloodiest of the war. General Govorov was cautious as to what summer might bring. On June 3 he suggested that the “worst is behind us. In 1941 we stopped the Germans; in 1942 we didn’t give them a yard; in 1943 we began to break the blockade, and it is our duty to carry the task to a victorious end.”

  He spoke-these words at Smolny at a session of the Leningrad City Council attended by Party Secretaries Zhdanov and Kuznetsov as well as Admiral Tributs. The occasion was the presentation of the first medals “For the Defense of Leningrad.” The medals were authorized for everyone who had survived the Leningrad siege. Mayor Peter Popkov handed them out. No. 40 went to Valerian Bogdanov-Berezovsky, the composer. He noted that they were handed out alphabetically. His initial being the second in the alphabet, he got a low number. Vsevolod Vishnevsky got No. 98. (“In the first hundred!” he commented.)

  Vera Inber got her medal on June 8 along with other writers, intellectuals and scientists. She was so moved she was unable to say a word. “This little metal disk joins to itself all of Leningrad,” she noted.1

  The summer drifted along. The lilacs this year, Vera Inber noticed, were extraordinary. She could not remember their being so heavy, so fragrant, so numerous. Birdcherry was everywhere. Leningrad was supposed to average thirty-five cloudless days a year. It seemed as though a new record for sunshine might be set this summer. Despite severe difficulties some artistic and scientific institutions trickled back. The Bolshoi Drama Theater was permitted to come for a temporary visit at the end of March. It stayed on and in June was permitted to resume permanent operations. The Musical Comedy Theater put five new productions into rehearsal. The stadium reopened May 30 for a summer football season (won by the Dynamo Club). The second anniversary of war, June 22, the 661st day of the siege, passed almost without notice. Vishnevsky remarked in his diary that it was the summer solstice—eighteen hours and fifty-two minutes long. He spent most of the day arguing with members of the Military Council about his new play, The Walls of Leningrad. They wanted him to eliminate “negative characters.” Vishnevsky told his critics, “I am sorry to see this bureaucratic cautiousness and calculation. Much is being forgotten and has been forgotten about the fall of 1941. This play is entirely authentic and taken from life.”