Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 (63 page)

40
Report to Zhdanov from Kubatkin, 2 June 1942, ibid., doc. 75, p. 323. This conflicts with a prosecutor’s report of 1 July 1943, according to which 1,700 people had been convicted of ‘special category banditry’, of whom 364 had been executed and 1,336 sentenced to imprisonment (Dzeniskevich, ed.,
Leningrad v osade
, doc. 195, table on p. 461).

Chapter 16: Anton Ivanovich is Angry

1
Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin,
A Book of the Blockade
, p. 65. See also Leon Gouré,
The Siege of Leningrad
, p. 190.

2
Reports from the 18th Army to the OKW, 7 and 19 October 1941, in Nikita Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, docs 13 and 19, pp. 127, 139.

3
Air defence workers were said to have formed ‘opposition groups’. SD reports, 24 October and 7 November 1941, ibid., docs 30 and 31, pp. 161, 164. On Soviet POWs, see Evan Mawdsley,
Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941
–
1945
, pp. 103–5.

4
SD report of 18 February 1941, in Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 39, pp. 196–7.

5
NKVD report to Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942, ibid., doc. 64, p. 280.

6
See for example a table from 1939, in Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 1, doc. 7, p. 14.

7
Georgi Knyazev, 9 November 1941, in Adamovich and Granin,
A
Book of the Blockade
,
pp. 323
–
4.

8
Irina Zelenskaya, 1 September 1941, in
‘Ya nye sdamsya do poslednego
 . . .
’: zapiski iz blokadnogo Leningrada
,
St Petersburg, 2010, p. 20.

9
Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, 6 July 1941, in Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, eds,
Writing the Siege: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary
Prose
, pp. 27–8.

10
Quoted in an NKVD report to Zhdanov of December 1941, in Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 62, p. 271.

11
Vera Inber,
Leningrad Diary
, p. 37 (25 December 1941).

12
Ivan Zhilinsky, ‘Blokadniy dnevnik’,
Voprosy istorii
, 5–7, part 1, p. 21 (2 January 1942).
Notes to Pages 298–303

13
Reports to Zhdanov from the ‘organisers’ and ‘instructors’ departments of the City Party Committee, 9 and 27 January 1942. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 24, op. 2v, delo 5760.

14
Richard Bidlack, ‘The Political Mood in Leningrad during the First Year of the Soviet-German War’,
The
Russian Review
, 59 (January 2000), pp. 110–11.

15
NKVD report to Beria and Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942, in Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 64, p. 278.

16
Reports to Zhdanov from the ‘organisers’ department’ of the City Party Committee, 14 and 27 January 1942. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 24, op. 2v, delo 5760. Andrei Dzeniskevich, ed.,
Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov
, doc. 199, p. 472.

17
Report to Leningrad NKVD head Kubatkin, 12 February 1942, in Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 66, p. 290.

18
NKVD report to Beria and Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942, ibid.,
doc. 64, p. 278.

19
Report to the head of the SD from Einssatzgruppe A, stationed in Krasnogvardeisk, 10 December 1941, ibid., doc. 35, p. 179.

20
Vasili Yershov, untitled typescript, Research Program on the USSR, Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, p. 77.

21
NKVD report to Zhdanov, 12 January 1942, in Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 63, p. 274.

22
NKVD report to Beria and Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942, ibid., doc. 64, p. 285.

23
Report from Leningrad NKVD head Kubatkin to Alexander Kuznetsov, 12 December 1943, ibid.,
doc. 15, pp. 57–60. See also Michael Jones,
Leningrad: State of Siege
, pp. 286–8. A report of November 1941 mentions that letters have been sent to the leadership threatening strikes and demonstrations unless rations are increased. See Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 53, pp. 243–4.

Chapter 17: The Big House

1
In his foreword to one of the best post-war studies, Leon Goure’s
The Siege of Leningrad
. Gouré, like the BBC journalist Alexander Werth, was born Russian. His Menshevik family fled the Revolution to Berlin, and the Third Reich to Paris and later New Jersey, where Leon joined the US Army and received citizenship for the first time in his life. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and after the war worked as an interpreter for the occupying forces in Germany, before making a career in the Rand Corporation and academia. He died in 2007, at the age of eighty-five.
Notes to Pages 303–308

2
Rimma Neratova, quoted in Lisa Kirschenbaum,
The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments
, p. 34.

3
An NKVD report of 1 July 1943 states that 80 per cent of convictions to date for counter-revolutionary crimes took place in the first year of the war. Nikita Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 195, p. 453.

4
See Irina Reznikova (Flige), ‘Repressii v period blokady Leningrada’,
Vestnik ‘Memoriala’
4/5 (10/11), 1995, pp. 95–7; NKVD reports of 6 November and mid-December 1941,
in
Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2,
docs 51 and 58, pp. 232, 259.

5
NKVD report of 1 October 1942. Andrei Dzeniskevich, ed.,
Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov
, doc. 190, p. 441.

6
Military prosecutor’s report, 1 July 1943, ibid., doc. 195, pp. 257–9.

7
Dmitri Likhachev,
Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir
, pp. 235, 295.

8
Orlando Figes,
The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia
, pp. 445–6.

9
‘Blokadniy dnevnik uchitelya Vinokurova A. I.’, in Stanislav Bernev and Sergei Chernov, eds,
Arkhiv Bolshogo Doma: blokadniye dnevniki i dokumenty
, pp. 236–90.

10
Aleksandr Boldyrev,
Osadnaya zapis: blokadniy dnevnik
, p. 38 (31 December 1941). Anna Akhmatova’s nickname for the Big House was the ‘Royal Court of Wonderland’.

11
Reznikova (Flige), ‘Repressii’, p. 103. There is also memoir evidence of cannibalism in the Kresty: in a commemorative brochure published to mark the 100th anniversary of the prison’s foundation, a siege survivor describes seeing a group of fifteen to twenty inmates sitting in a courtyard openly eating corpse meat (Richard Bidlack, ‘Survival Strategies in Leningrad’, in Robert Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch, eds,
The People’s War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union
, p. 107).

12
Report by the Leningrad Statistical Service, 5 May 1944, in Dzeniskevich, ed.,
Leningrad v osade
, doc. 156, p. 349. Deaths in prison dropped slowly through the rest of 1942, before peaking again, at 815, in January 1943.

13
Petition from the Corrective-Labour Camps and Columns Directorate of the NKVD to State Defence Committee Emissary D. V. Pavlov, 31 December 1941, in Dzeniskevich, ed.,
Leningrad v osade
, doc. 175, p. 413.

14
Ivan Zhilinsky, ‘Blokadniy dnevnik (osen 1941 – vesna 1942 g.)’,
Voprosy istorii
, 5–6, 1996, pp. 3–7 (16 January 1942).

Part 4. Waiting for Liberation: January 1942–January 1942

Chapter 18: Meat Wood

1
Winston Churchill,
The Second World War
, pp. 465, 467.

2
Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed.,
Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–44
, pp. 200, 220 (12
–
13 and 17
–
18 January 1941).
Notes to Pages 313–321

3
Fritz Hockenjos, typescript, Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv: MSG 2/4034-4038 (5, 14, 16 January and 1 February 1942).

4
Antony Beevor and Lyuba Vinogradova, eds,
A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–45
(September 1941); Catherine Merridale,
Ivan’s War: The Red Army 1939–45
, p. 167.

5
Dmitri Pavlov,
Leningrad 1941
, p. 88.

6
On desertion, see Nikita Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 11, p. 40. On food theft and embezzlement among NKVD troops see orders of 1 February, 22 April and 16 July 1942. RGVA: Fond 32912, op. 1, delo 78, pp. 10, 39, 85. A report of 21 February complains that delivery drivers stop at villages en route, where they ‘behave improperly, get drunk and supply female acquaintances with food’. (RGVA: Fond 32904, op. 1, delo 80, p. 8.)

7
‘Dnevnik krasnoarmeitsa Putyakova S. F’, in Stanislav Bernev and Sergei Chernov, eds,
Arkhiv Bolshogo Doma: blokadniye dnevniki i dokumenty
, p. 382 (29 December 1941).

8
NKVD report to Zhdanov, 22 December 1941, in Lomagin,
Neizvestnaya blokada
, vol. 2, doc. 59, p. 261.

9
Vasili Churkin, http://militera.lib.ru (20 November 1941).

10
See for example Yelena Skrjabina,
Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader
, p. 55 (18 January 1942).

11
Vasili Yershov, untitled typescript, Research Program on the USSR, Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, pp. 40
–
41.

12
Ibid., pp. 66
–
7.

13
Stavka directive, 10 January 1942; David Glantz,
The Battle for Leningrad 1941–44
, pp. 149
–
50.

14
See Harrison Salisbury,
The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
, pp. 544
–
5 for Mekhlis’s long history of recommending colleagues’ arrests. In the words of an associate he was ‘a remarkably energetic and vigorous man, as decisive as he was incompetent, the master of varied but superficial knowledge and self-confident to the point of wilfulness’. Donald Rayfield calls him ‘Stalin’s least-known but most vicious scorpion’.

15
Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, eds, Franz Halder,
The Halder War Diary, 1939–1942
, p. 599 (5 January 1942).

16
Hockenjos, typescript, Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, pp. 69
–
70 (23 February 1942).
Notes to Pages 321–333

17
Burdick and Jacobsen, eds, Franz Halder,
The Halder War Diary
,
p. 608 (2 March 1942).

18
Hockenjos, typescript, Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv: p. 84 (13 and 16 April 1942).

19
Glantz,
The Battle for Leningrad 1941–44
, pp. 202
–
3.

20
I. I. Kalabin, in I. A. Ivanova, ed.,
Tragediya Myasnogo Bora: sbornik vospominanii uchastnikov i ochevidtsev Lyubanskoi operatsii
, pp. 139
–
40. For similar accounts see Glantz,
The Battle for Leningrad 1941–44
, p. 204.

21
In a letter to Zhdanov of 3 June 1942 Khozin defended himself against accusations of drunkenness and misbehaviour with two telegraph girls. The telegraph operators, he protested, joined him only to watch films, and though he took ‘100g of vodka before supper, sometimes even two or three little glasses’, he had never been drunk in his life. (RGASPI: Fond 77, op.3, delo 133.)

22
I. I. Kalabin, in Ivanovna, ed.,
Tragediya Myasnogo Bora
, p. 142.

23
I. D. Nikonov, in ibid., p. 157.

24
For a full account of Vlasov’s career see Catherine Andreyev, ‘Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov’, in Harold Shukman, ed.,
Stalin’s Generals
, pp. 301
–
11.

25
RGASPI: Fond 83, op. 1, yed. khr. 18, pp. 91
–
104.

26
Glantz,
The Battle for Leningrad 1941–44
, pp. 207
–
8.