Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941-1944

Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941-1944 PDF Author: J. Barber
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403938822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
From 1941-1944 Leningrad saw by far the largest-scale famine ever to occur in a developed society. This book examines the nature and consequences of the extreme conditions created by the German blockade of Leningrad between September 1941 and January 1944. Using declassified documents from Party and State archives in Moscow and St Petersburg and interviews with survivors, the authors have produced the most informed and detailed analysis to date of the impact of the siege on the lives and health of the people of Leningrad.

Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941-1944

Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941-1944 PDF Author: J. Barber
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403938822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
From 1941-1944 Leningrad saw by far the largest-scale famine ever to occur in a developed society. This book examines the nature and consequences of the extreme conditions created by the German blockade of Leningrad between September 1941 and January 1944. Using declassified documents from Party and State archives in Moscow and St Petersburg and interviews with survivors, the authors have produced the most informed and detailed analysis to date of the impact of the siege on the lives and health of the people of Leningrad.

The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia

The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia PDF Author: Donald Filtzer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113948575X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This is the first detailed study of the standard of living of ordinary Russians following World War II. It examines urban living conditions under the Stalinist regime with a focus on the key issues of sanitation, access to safe water supplies, personal hygiene and anti-epidemic controls, diet and nutrition, and infant mortality. Comparing five key industrial regions, it shows that living conditions lagged some fifty years behind Western European norms. The book reveals that, despite this, the years preceding Stalin's death saw dramatic improvements in mortality rates thanks to the application of rigorous public health controls and Western medical innovations. While tracing these changes, the book also analyzes the impact that the absence of an adequate urban infrastructure had on people's daily lives and on the relationship between the Stalinist regime and the Russian people, and, finally, how the Soviet experience compared to that of earlier industrializing societies.

Leningrad

Leningrad PDF Author: Michael Jones
Publisher: John Murray
ISBN: 184854121X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
When the German High Command encircled Leningrad it was a deliberate policy to eradicate the city’s civilian population by starving them to death. As winter set in and food supplies dwindled, starvation and panic set in. A specialist in battle psychology and the vital role of morale in desperate circumstances, Michael Jones tells the human story of Leningrad. Drawing on newly available eyewitness accounts and diaries, he shows Leningrad in its every dimension including taboo truths, long-suppressed by the Soviets, such as looting, criminal gangs and cannibalism. But, for many ordinary citizens, Leningrad marked the triumph of the human spirit. They drew deeply on their inner resources to inspire, comfort and help one another. At the height of the siege an extraordinary live performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony profoundly strengthened the city's will to resist. When German troops heard it in their trenches one remarked: ‘We began to understand we would never take Leningrad. Yet, Leningrad’s self-defence came at a huge price. When the 900-day siege ended in 1944 almost a million people had died and those who survived would be permanently marked by what they had endured, as this superbly insightful and moving history shows.

The Leningrad Blockade, 1941-1944

The Leningrad Blockade, 1941-1944 PDF Author: Richard Bidlack
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300110294
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 551

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Book Description
Chronicles the three year siege of Leningrad during World War II, focusing on the city's inhabitants, the inner workings of the Communist Party and secret police, and the people's will to survive.

Wartime Suffering and Survival

Wartime Suffering and Survival PDF Author: Jeffrey K. Hass
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197514278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Wartime Suffering and Survival explores how average people survive in the face of incredible odds. Using diaries, recollections, police records, interviews, and state documents from the Blockade of Leningrad in World War II, he shows how average Leningraders coped with the nightmares of war, starvation, and extreme uncertainty. Hass not only shares Leningraders' stories to uncover a little-told side of Russian/Soviet history, but also to reveal the humancondition--who we really are when our backs are against the wall.

The War Within

The War Within PDF Author: Alexis Peri
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971558
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Winner of the University of Southern California Book Prize Honorable Mention, Reginald Zelnik Book Prize “Fascinating and perceptive.” —Antony Beevor, New York Review of Books “Stand aside, Homer. I doubt whether even the author of the Iliad could have matched Alexis Peri’s account of the 872-day siege which Leningrad endured.” —Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator “Powerful and illuminating...A fascinating, insightful, and nuanced work.” —Anna Reid, Times Literary Supplement “Much has been written about Leningrad’s heroic resistance. But the remarkable aspect of [Peri’s] book is that she tells a very different story: recounting the internal struggles of ordinary people desperately trying to survive and make sense of their fate.” —John Thornhill, Financial Times “A sensitive, at times almost poetic examination of their emotions and disordered mental states. It both contrasts with and complements the equally accurate official Soviet portrait of a stalwart population standing firm in the face of evil and in defense of Soviet ideals.” —Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs In September 1941, two and a half months after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the German Wehrmacht encircled Leningrad. Cut off from the rest of Russia, the city remained blockaded for 872 days, at a cost of almost a million lives. It was one of the longest and deadliest sieges in modern history. The War Within chronicles the Leningrad blockade from the perspective of those who endured it. Drawing on unpublished diaries, Alexis Peri tells the tragic story of how young and old struggled to make sense of a world collapsing around them. When the blockade was lifted in 1944, Kremlin officials censored publications describing the ordeal and arrested many of Leningrad’s wartime leaders. Some were executed. Diaries—now dangerous to their authors—were concealed, shelved in archives, and forgotten. The War Within recovers these lost accounts, shedding light on one of World War II’s darkest episodes while paying tribute the resilience of the human spirit.

The Diary of Lena Mukhina

The Diary of Lena Mukhina PDF Author: Lena Mukhina
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 144726990X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
In May 1941 Lena Mukhina was an ordinary teenage girl, living in Leningrad, worrying about her homework and whether Vova - the boy she liked - liked her. Like a good Soviet schoolgirl, she was also diligently learning German, the language of Russia's Nazi ally. And she was keeping a diary, in which she recorded her hopes and dreams. Then, on 22 June 1941, Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and declared war on the Soviet Union. All too soon, Leningrad was besieged and life became a living hell. Lena and her family fought to stay alive; their city was starving and its citizens were dying in their hundreds of thousands. From day to dreadful day, Lena records her experiences: the desperate hunt for food, the bitter cold of the Russian winter and the cruel deaths of those she loved. A truly remarkable account of this most terrible era in modern history, The Diary of Lena Mukhina is the vivid first-hand testimony of a courageous young woman struggling simply to survive.

Leningrad: Siege and Symphony

Leningrad: Siege and Symphony PDF Author: Brian Moynahan
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802191908
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
The “gripping story” of a Nazi blockade, a Russian composer, and a ragtag band of musicians who fought to keep up a besieged city’s morale (The New York Times Book Review). For 872 days during World War II, the German Army encircled the city of Leningrad—modern-day St. Petersburg—in a military operation that would cripple the former capital and major Soviet industrial center. Palaces were looted and destroyed. Schools and hospitals were bombarded. Famine raged and millions died, soldiers and innocent civilians alike. Against the backdrop of this catastrophe, historian Brian Moynahan tells the story of Dmitri Shostakovich, whose Seventh Symphony was first performed during the siege and became a symbol of defiance in the face of fascist brutality. Titled “Leningrad” in honor of the city and its people, the work premiered on August 9, 1942—with musicians scrounged from frontline units and military bands, because only twenty of the orchestra’s hundred members had survived. With this compelling human story of art and culture surviving amid chaos and violence, Leningrad: Siege and Symphony “brings new depth and drama to a key historical moment” (Booklist, starred review), in “a narrative that is by turns painful, poignant and inspiring” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). “He reaches into the guts of the city to extract some humanity from the blood and darkness, and at its best Leningrad captures the heartbreak, agony and small salvations in both death and survival . . . Moynahan’s descriptions of the battlefield, which also draw from the diaries of the cold, lice-ridden, hungry combatants, are haunting.” —The Washington Post

At Leningrad's Gates

At Leningrad's Gates PDF Author: William Lubbeck
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1935149792
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
“A first-rate memoir” from a German soldier who rose from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front of World War II (City Book Review). William Lubbeck, age nineteen, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring, his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa. After grueling marches amid countless Russian bodies, burnt-out vehicles, and a great number of cheering Baltic civilians, Lubbeck’s unit entered the outskirts of Leningrad, making the deepest penetration of any German formation. In September 1943, Lubbeck earned the Iron Cross First Class and was assigned to officers’ training school in Dresden. By the time he returned to Russia, Army Group North was in full-scale retreat. In the last chaotic scramble from East Prussia, Lubbeck was able to evacuate on a newly minted German destroyer. He recounts how the ship arrived in the British zone off Denmark with all guns blazing against pursuing Russians. The following morning, May 8, 1945, he learned that the war was over. After his release from British captivity, Lubbeck married his sweetheart, Anneliese, and in 1949, immigrated to the United States where he raised a successful family. With the assistance of David B. Hurt, he has drawn on his wartime notes and letters, Soldatbuch, regimental history, and personal memories to recount his four years of frontline experience. Containing rare firsthand accounts of both triumph and disaster, At Leningrad’s Gates provides a fascinating glimpse into the reality of combat on the Eastern Front.

Leningrad 1943

Leningrad 1943 PDF Author: Alexander Werth
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857724746
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The Siege of Leningrad is the most powerful testimony to the immeasurable cruelty and horror of World War II. From 1941-1945, the Eastern Front was the site of some of the bloodiest atrocities of the war and the city of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, proved to be a decisive point in the conflict. German policy was resolutely determined to redraw the map of Europe, annihilate the Soviet Union and give large areas of territory to Finland. Through Hitler's ambition to completely eradicate the city and its entire population, it was decided that the most efficient method of invasion was to encircle and bombard the city into submission. After 872 days of aggression, one and a half million people lost their lives, mostly from starvation. As the sole British correspondent to have been in Leningrad during the blockade, Alexander Werth's eyewitness account presents a harrowing perspective on the savagery and destruction wrought by the Nazis against the civilian population of the city. His writing evokes compelling images of terror - the oil bombing of children's hospitals, mass starvation and cannibalism - with rich and sophisticated commentary on the internal politics of Soviet party chiefs, soldiers and civilian resistance fighters. Both an authoritative historical document and a journalistic re-telling of the overwhelming sadness, grief and futility of 20th century warfare, this is an invaluable look at one of the greatest losses of human life in recorded history.