Diary of another Tanya. Miracles happened in besieged Leningrad

Only Tanya Savicheva’s diary is known throughout the country, which contains nine terrible lines. Each is dedicated to the death of one of their loved ones. Last entry: “Only Tanya left.” AiF found the siege diary of another Leningrad schoolgirl, Tanya Vassoevich. They both lived on Vasilyevsky Island. Tanya Savicheva first went blind, then went crazy from her experience and died in evacuation. The meager lines of her diary became an indictment document at the Nuremberg trials. Tanya Vassoevich survived and passed away two years ago - in January 2012.

The diaries of two Tans are like two sides of a coin. The dark side is tragic death, the light side is the victory of the survivors.

Tanya Vassoevich's diary is kept in the house of her son, a professor at St. Petersburg state university Andrey Vassoevich. Tanya began taking notes on June 22, 1941. Here are the first bombings of Leningrad, and July 18, 1941, when the ring around the city had not yet closed, but food cards had already been introduced. In September, the first lesson at the art school, which did not take place: “Our teacher, folding his easel, said that he was going to the front as a volunteer.” Secondary school classes began in November: “Our class was almost in full force"(then there will be two boys and nine girls out of forty in the class). Tanya describes endless standing in lines for a portion of bread, which for children and unemployed people in a few months shrank from 400 g per day to 125. They boiled wood glue and ate it.

The photo from the archive of Professor Andrei Vassoevich shows a page from Tanya’s diary. Tanya describes how great happiness it was when she was standing in line for groceries with a classmate and they got a duranda (pressed tiles made from sunflower husks). They needed money to buy groceries using cards, and their family was sorely short of funds. And the older brother, instead of eating his portion of bread, sold it at the market and gave the money to his mother so that she could buy new cards. He did this until his mother realized and forbade him to do so.

The girl's older brother, 15-year-old Volodya, died of hunger on January 23, 1942 at 6.28 - recorded in the diary. And Tanya’s mother, Ksenia Platonovna, passed away on February 17, 1942 at 11.45. “More than 4 thousand people a day died in the city that winter. The corpses were collected and buried in mass graves. More than half a million people are buried in mass graves at Piskarevskoye Cemetery, says Professor Vassoevich. - Tanya, being a 13-year-old girl, used the remaining money to buy a coffin for her brother. Her mother could no longer do this; she couldn’t get up due to weakness.” The city's Smolensk cemetery was closed; the dead were not accepted there, but Tanya persuaded the caretaker to dig graves. From the diary: “At my brother’s funeral there was Aunt Lyusya, me and Tolya Takvelin - Vovin’s best friend and classmate. Tolya cried - this touched me most of all. Lucy and I were at my mother’s funeral. Vova and mom are buried in real coffins, which I bought on Sredny Prospekt near the second line. Khudyakov (a caretaker at the cemetery) dug graves for cereals and bread. He is good and has been good to me.”

When Tanya's mother died, her body lay in the apartment for 9 days before the girl was able to organize a new funeral. In her diary, she drew a plan of the site (see Tanya’s drawing. - Ed.) and noted the burial places of her loved ones in the hope that, if she survived, she would definitely install monuments on the graves. And so it happened. In the picture with the cemetery, Tanya, indicating the dates of death of her brother and mother and their funeral, used a code she had invented: she understood that she buried her relatives in the closed Smolensk cemetery semi-legally. Only because the watchman Khudyakov was touched by her childish concern and went along with the child’s request. Exhausted no less than the others, he dug graves in almost forty-degree frost, fortifying himself with a piece of bread that Tanya received from her deceased brother’s card. Then she told her son, Professor Andrei Vassoevich, that she became truly scared when she was filling out her brother’s death certificate: “The registrar at the clinic took out Vladimir Nikolaevich Vassoevich’s card and wrote the word “died” in large handwriting.

“Mom and her deceased older brother were very close,” says Andrei Vassoevich. - Vladimir was interested in biology, their whole apartment was filled with flowers, and for his sister he built an aquarium with fish. In 1941-1942. There was no cold and snowy winter in Leningrad. People installed potbelly stoves in their apartments and heated them with furniture. Mom and brother wrapped themselves in a blanket and drew plans for palaces with swimming pools and greenhouses. It was not for nothing that after the war my mother entered college at the Faculty of Architecture. During the blockade, a library continued to operate in their area on Vasilyevsky Island, where they went to buy books. Mom said that she had never read as much as during the blockade. And her mother, while she had the strength, was on duty on the roof every day - guarding incendiary bombs. Shelling and bombing were daily. Leningrad was not only surrounded by a siege; there were battles going on for it all these almost 900 days. The Battle of Leningrad was the longest in the history of the war. Hitler’s directive No. 1601 of September 22, 1941 says in black and white about Leningrad: “to wipe the city off the face of the earth,” and about its inhabitants: “we are not interested in preserving the population.”

After the loss of her mother and brother in the spring of 1942, a miracle happened to Tanya. In her empty apartment there was a block of ice - a gift from her brother, a frozen aquarium with fish frozen in ice. When the ice melted, so did one gold fish and started swimming again. This story is a metaphor for the entire blockade: it seemed to the enemy that the city should be dead, it was impossible to survive in it. But he survived.

“In the 90s, it became fashionable to say that cannibalism flourished in Leningrad, and people lost their human appearance - my mother was terribly indignant at this. They tried to present blatant isolated cases as a mass phenomenon. Mom recalled how a music teacher came to them and said that her husband had died of hunger, and Volodya exclaimed that if he had known, he would have given him his bread. And a few days later he himself was gone. Mom often recalled the noble deeds of the siege survivors. Her diary echoes what the poet Olga Berggolts, who survived the siege, wrote: “... we discovered terrible happiness - / Worthyly unsung so far, - / When we shared the last crust, / The last pinch of tobacco.” “The city survived because people thought not about themselves, but about others,” says Professor Vassoevich.

“Sense of duty”, “friendship” - these are words from Tanya’s diary. When she found out that the father of her best friend, who was being evacuated, had died, she buried him next to her brother: “I couldn’t let him stay on the street.” The hungry girl spent her last crumbs of food on the funeral.

In the spring of 1942, Tanya was evacuated from Leningrad. For several weeks she traveled to Alma-Ata on different echelons, keeping her diary and photographs of loved ones as the apple of her eye. While evacuating, Tanya finally met her father, a famous petroleum geologist. When the blockade closed, he was on a business trip and found himself separated from his family. Both returned to Leningrad after the war. In her hometown, Tanya immediately went to to the best friend his late brother, Tolya, the one who cried at the funeral. She learned from his mother that the young man died shortly after her brother. Tanya tried to find four more of Volodya’s friends - they all died during the siege. Tatyana Nikolaevna devoted many years of her life to teaching children painting. And she always told them: “Keep a diary, because a diary is a story!”

Leningrad was not wiped off the face of the earth. Can we say the same about our memory of the war today? Is it not erased in our heart? It’s sad that 95 pages of the diary of a 13-year-old schoolgirl who survived the siege have not been published. From it, modern teenagers could learn more about war than from some textbooks and modern films.

We know “adult” evidence of a monstrous, not fully studied phenomenon called the Leningrad Siege. But there is little evidence from children. Lena Mukhina's diary is one of them.

16/XI-41

Air raid alert again. It’s half past eight in the evening, so please, the German is right there.

I was born at the end of October 1941, premature, during a raid in the Kaunas ghetto, on Raguce Street, just when the Germans approached Moscow. It was not the right time, but there was nowhere to go, and on the fifth day of my life I went, or rather, they carried me swaddled to my mother’s breast, to the “Great Children’s Action.” It was a sorting - of the sick, old, disabled and newborn children - to the side of death, it was called for “hard work”, and the healthy and young - for work, for the “good of Germany”.

Today was a bit of a bad day. Aka left to look for something edible at 9 o’clock in the morning and arrived only at 5 o’clock. Mom and I had already come to terms with the idea that Aka didn’t get anything and we wouldn’t have lunch at all today, and suddenly Aka appeared, and not empty-handed, but with jelly. Brought 500 gr. meat jelly. We immediately cooked the soup and ate two full bowls of hot soup. The way we live now is still bearable, but if the situation worsens, I don’t know how we will survive it. Previously, relatively recently, my mother could get soup at work without a card, and this was the first time they gave me soup at school. But the next day a decree was issued that soup should also be given on ration cards.

150 grams of bread is clearly not enough for us. Aka buys bread for himself and me in the morning, and before school I eat almost everything and sit without bread all day. I don’t really know what to do, maybe it’s better to do this: every other day in the school canteen, take the second 50 grams on the cereal card and don’t take bread that day, and on another day eat 300 grams of bread. I'll have to try it. In general, my health is not good. There's something sucking inside all the time.

Soon, on the 21st of this month, it’s my birthday, I’ll turn 17 years old. I’ll celebrate somehow, it’s good that this is the first day of the third decade, so there will definitely be sweets. How I want to eat.

When after the war there is balance again and it will be possible to buy everything, I will buy a kilo of black bread, a kilo of gingerbread, half a liter of cottonseed oil. I’ll crumble the bread and gingerbread, pour plenty of butter on it, grind it all well and mix it, then I’ll take a tablespoon and enjoy, we’ll eat to our fill. Then my mother and I will bake different pies, with meat, potatoes, cabbage, and grated carrots. And then my mother and I will fry the potatoes and eat the rosy, sizzling potatoes straight from the fire. And we will eat ears with sour cream and dumplings, and pasta with tomato and fried onions, and a hot white loaf with a crispy crust, spread with butter, with sausage or cheese, and always a large piece of sausage, so that our teeth will drown in everything this when biting. Mom and I will eat crumbly buckwheat porridge with cold milk, and then the same porridge, fried in a frying pan with onions, shiny from excess oil. We will finally eat hot, fatty pancakes with jam and plump, thick pancakes. My God, we will eat so much that we ourselves will become scared.

Tamara and I decided to write a book about the life in our time of Soviet children in the 9th and 10th grades. About fleeting hobbies and first love, about friendship. In general, write a book that we would like to read, but which, unfortunately, does not exist.

All clear, air raid all clear. It's quarter past nine. Time to go to bed. Tomorrow to school.

Until next time.

Ours captured, or rather took back, two more new cities in the Kalin[in] direction. On the Leningrad sector of the front, ours also pushed back the enemy, so that the road from Tikhvin to Volkhov was completely cleared of the Germans. Today we are at school

They gave me not jelly, but curdled soy milk, a quarter of a liter. It was very tasty, I brought it home and shared it with my mother and Aka. They really liked it too.

Today Aka stood behind the meat and received excellent American pressed meat, fatty, boneless. Mom didn’t go to work for the second day. There is no strength, and then all of them will soon be fired anyway, because the hospital there is being liquidated. The wounded are all already dispersed to different hospitals. Mom will be out of work again. It is unknown where she will be able to get a job.

Tomorrow is already the 19th, and we have not yet received sweets and butter.

Today at 7 o'clock the electricity turned on, so I am writing this entry in the light of electricity, but we have no water.

Today we had delicious soup with meat and pasta. There will be enough cat meat for two more times. Yes, 3 times American, but what will happen then is unknown.

It would be nice to get a cat somewhere else, then we would have enough for a long time again. Yes, I never thought that cat meat was so tasty and tender.

My relationship with school is, one might say, rubbish... I wrote a poor essay on literature. Lots of grammatical errors, and the essay itself is unimportant. Tomorrow I can write again. I think I need to try my luck, maybe I’ll write well... It was very disappointing to hear from my literature teacher that she was deceived in me, that she thought I was better than I really am. That I am one of the most anti-Soviet-minded. No, she’s wrong about that, I’m a Soviet Schoolboy at heart, but in reality this really can’t be said about me, because I’m getting very loose right now, I’m too lazy to gather my strength, I think too much about myself. After all, the first quarter is ending soon, and I’m not studying my lessons at all, I’m terribly neglecting the material, and, of course, this will not be in vain for me. I will greatly upset my mother with my bad progress. Of course, you can refer to the fact that learning is difficult. But who denies this? This is where my patriotism could manifest itself: that, despite the difficulties, in spite of everything, I would make every effort to study well. And what happens! Conversations, dreams that I will be worthy of the title of Soviet citizen, all empty chatter. The very first trials on my way broke me, bent me. I gave up. I'm a wimp. Difficulties scared me. I wrap myself in a hundred clothes and do nothing, eat bread in vain and just whine - it’s cold, cold.

Yes cold. But is cold really something that cannot be overcome? No, the cold can be overcome.

13/II-42

When I wake up in the morning, at first I can’t figure out that my mother really died. It seems that she is here, lying in her bed and will now wake up, and we will talk to her about how we will live after the war. But the terrible reality takes its toll. Mom's gone! Mom is no longer alive. Neither does Aki. I'm alone. It's just not clear! At times I get furious. I want to howl, squeal, bang my head against the wall, bite! How will I live without my mother? And the room is desolate, with more and more dust every day. I'll probably soon turn into Plyushkin...

Dear, dear, beloved mother. You didn't live to see improvement for just a few days. It’s so insulting, I’m so annoyed for you to the point of pain in my heart. You died on the 7th in the morning, and on the 11th they added bread, and on the 12th they gave you cereal.

But, my God, how, how will I live alone. I can not imagine. I have absolutely no idea! No, I'll go to Zhenya. There are also strangers all around. I'm so unhappy!

God, merciful God! For what! What is all this for?

Women's Day is coming soon. The weather is sunny and frosty. The bread hasn't been added yet. When you think about how much you have already experienced, you feel downright scared and happy, the hardest part is behind you. I survived it and one of all 3 of us survived. If the food improvement had been delayed by another half a month, then I would have followed Aka and my mother to Marata, 76. Marata, 76! Oh, what an ominous address, how many thousands of Leningraders recognized it...

Chava Volovich's blog was created in early 2009. The blog represents the diaries of a former political prisoner - the girl Khava, who from the age of 20 wandered around prisons, grew up in prison, became a woman among prison walls, gave birth to a child within these walls and buried him within these same walls.

Mommy, mommy, you couldn’t stand it, you died. Mommy, mommy, my dear friend. God, how cruel fate is, you wanted to live so much. You died courageously...

These last days, February 5, 6, 7, my mother almost didn’t talk to me at all. She lay with her head covered, very strict and demanding.

When I threw myself on her chest with tears, she pushed me away: “You’re a fool for crying. Or you think I'm dying." - “No, mommy, no, you and I will go to the Volga again.” - “We’ll go to the Volga and bake pancakes. Now, let's go potty with you. Come on, take off the blanket. Okay, now take off your left leg, now your right, great.” And I took my legs off the bed, when I only touched them, it’s terrible. I understood that my mother did not have long to live. The legs were like those of a doll, bones, and instead of muscles there were some kind of rags.

“Whoops,” she said cheerfully, trying to get up herself. - Oh, come on, pick me up like this.

Yes, mom, you were a person with a strong spirit. Of course, you knew that you would die, but you didn’t consider it necessary to talk about it. I just remember the 7th in the evening. I asked my mother:

“Kiss me, mommy. We haven't kissed in so long."

Her stern face softened and we clung to each other. Both were crying.

Mommy, dear!

Lyoshenka, you and I are unhappy!

Then we went to bed, that is, I went to bed. After a little while I hear my mother calling me:

Alyosha, are you sleeping?

No, what?

You know, I feel so good now, so easy, tomorrow I’ll probably be better. I have never felt as happy as I do now.

Mom, what are you saying? You're scaring me. Why did you feel good?

Don't know. Okay, sleep well.

And I fell asleep. I knew that my mother would die, but I thought that she would live for another 5, 6 days, but I could not imagine that death would come tomorrow.

I fell asleep. In my sleep I heard my mother calling me again. “Lyoshenka, Alyosha, Alyosha, are you sleeping?” As now, these words ring in my ears. Then she fell silent. I fell asleep again sound sleep. When I woke up again, I heard my mother say something, but not very clearly, I called out to her:

Mom, mom, what are you saying?

Silent. Then he mumbles something again, but doesn’t answer me...

And for the last few hours I have been sitting at her bedside. She never regained consciousness and died quietly, somehow she froze, [I] didn’t even notice. Although she was sitting at her head. This is how [everyone] dies from exhaustion.

SCHOOL OF LIFE

Memories of children of besieged Leningrad

I evacuated twice

Bednenko Vladimir Nikolaevich

Vladimir Nikolaevich’s father, Nikolai Illarionovich Bednenko (1902–1968), was born in Ukraine, in the Donetsk region, the village of Bryantsevka. In 1931 he was sent to study at the Red Academy in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Mother Kuban Cossack Alexandra Petrovna Nabatnikova (1907–2002) from the family of the first settlers who founded the village of Kurgannaya in the Krasnodar Territory. There are still five in the village brick houses, built by Alexandra Petrovna’s father, which currently houses institutions of regional significance; he also built an Orthodox church.

In 1941 I lived with my family in Leningrad. I was 14 years old and graduated from sixth grade. In our time, people went to school from the age of 8. It was summer holidays. Before the war, the population held training sessions at night, there were already bomb shelters everywhere - huge white letters BU indicated their location.

We were afraid of gas, we were taught what types of gases there are - phosgene, diphosgene, what they smell like, how to distinguish them. And in which direction should you run so that the wind carries away the gas. There were exercises in the school yard: we were taught to work with degassers - metal boxes on wheels with sawdust in them; if contaminated liquid fell, we had to collect it in these boxes and then throw it into the water along with the sawdust. Leningrad is full of rivers and canals, next to us is the Moika, the Griboyedov Canal - dirty sawdust was dumped there, and fish died.

Everyone was preparing for war. We were afraid of spies, we were taught that if you hear people speaking bad Russian, report it to the police guards. I studied at the famous school - Peterschule - the first school created by Peter I, it was a German school, German teachers taught there. Discipline at school was strict. This does not mean that the children did not run around the school. They ran, pushed, grabbed some boys and shoved them into the women's restroom, where the girls beat them - such usual life kids. But if a teacher is walking, anyone with a red bandage is the floor attendant. She could take her by the ear for violating the order, and there would be no accusations that she was making fun of her, nothing. Behind the ear is fine. He takes the offender to the teacher's room, finds out what class he is from, then calls the class teacher; if he is not there, he calls from home. Parents are busy and work. In addition, the parent raises with tenderness, gentleness, pats on the head, the mother does not know how to demand, she will still regret it, she will still cover up. And then you know, if you did it, you will be punished. And then the parent comes. The teacher says, when you are evicted from Leningrad, then you can play around. When I came to school, many German teachers had already been evicted (evictions began in 1934), and Russians were also evicted. I would like to note once again that our school was exemplary. If I met a person from Petershule, he was like my brother. I assure you, if one noble maiden from the Noble School of the Institute of Noble Maidens came to another noble maiden, she would take off her last dress, feed her and put her to bed. This is how we were brought up.

June 22 was a day off. Our family - my parents and my brother Boris (he is two years younger than me) lived in one room of a large communal apartment, the former apartment of General Shidlovsky, the chief equerry of the royal court. I was sent to buy bread from a bakery on Nevsky Prospekt. And we lived on Zhelyabova Street (formerly Bolshaya Konyushennaya), next to DLT - the House of Leningrad Trade. The bakery was next to the Pushkin pharmacy, where Pushkin also went for medicine. Pushkin's apartment was next to us. I was running home with a loaf of bread, and at that time a voice was heard from the radio loudspeaker (before the war they were installed on poles along the streets): “Attention, attention, there will be an important message now...” Everyone ran to the loudspeaker, and I followed them. They reported that the Germans had crossed the border and were bombing our cities... The war began. I listened and mechanically ate the entire loaf that I bought home. I ran back to the bakery, and there was already a line, they were taking 10 loaves of bread (they don’t give more to one person). I took two too. I ran home, my parents were still in bed, I told them from the doorway: “You are sleeping here, and there is war, Molotov said.” They didn't want to believe...

Learned how to put out an incendiary bomb. They often threw a cluster of bombs - four incendiary and one high-explosive. Sometimes they show in movies how they sit on the roof and extinguish bombs. Not true. If a bomb falls on the roof where you are sitting, you will be blown away by the blast wave. We need to escape to the floor below, it’s safe there concrete steps. And then go up to the roof and put out the bomb. To do this, there were barrels and large pincers, with which you had to grab the bomb and throw it into the barrel. She's gurgling there. But if you take it out and it dries out, it may start to burn again - this is due to phosphorus. Later we were given hats like those worn by welders. They weren't so scary.

I did not see the siege of Leningrad. Children were being taken out of Leningrad all the time, the main task was to save the children. I evacuated twice. The first evacuation was a school one. Already on June 23, Monday, we were all given lists of what we needed to prepare for evacuation: a comb, a towel, etc. The school identified responsible teachers, everyone was assigned to groups.

Everything was very organized, no panic, no screaming or running around. Buses arrived at the school, we were already at school, we were loaded into passenger cars, not freight cars. Our parents knew where we were being taken, they provided us with sugar, flour, and gave us pieces of paper with names and addresses. The first time we were taken near Leningrad to the Burga station on the Msta River. We got out of the carriages with bags on our shoulders - there were no backpacks then, my parents sewed bags for my brother Boris and me, they were tied with a loop, at the front they were called “sidor”. They asked me to sew them different color to recognize children. There were 2500 of us. Of course, now I understand that it was impossible to evacuate the children to Burgu. This is the main Moscow railway; trains traveled along it to Leningrad, carrying troops, shells, and military equipment. Tanks were coming. The Germans also broke through there. I don’t remember how long we were in Burg. It was autumn, but still warm, this evacuation was perceived as a walk: we fished, walked with the girls, first love. And this was not a pioneer camp: there was no camp discipline, there was freedom.

We were returned to Leningrad, I don’t remember which station. The second, so-called urban evacuation began. Mom came to see Boris and me off. Now we were loaded into freight cars, they were called “five hundred cheerful” during the war, maybe this is some kind of code. They took us out at night, in an organized manner, gave us directions for evacuation, my mother gave us a can, sugar, we dressed in winter clothes, in a coat. Boris and I slept on them, since there was nothing in the carriages, not even straw. I am of Cossack descent, I know very well that there must be straw in the carriages on which you sleep, then they throw it away and burn it so that there are no lice. But we had nothing; well, mother gave us a coat. They thought that they were sending us for three months, and in three months we would defeat Germany. Our destination was the city of Omsk. We traveled along the Northern Railway. We drove off not far and stopped somewhere. Some fields and buildings were visible. It was dark, night. On the rails next to our train there were tanks, huge bombs, if this had exploded, there would have been nothing left of us. We stand for an hour or two. Shots were heard in the dead of night. Apparently, a chain of people is coming and they are shooting - the Germans have broken through. A man in a railway worker’s uniform is running and shouting: “Evacuees, get out of the cars, run to the steppe, take the children away, now there will be hell here!” In each car with evacuees there was one of the accompanying adults. In our carriage, this was the father of one of the girls, Dora. He saw her off in Leningrad, and he was simply put on a carriage and obliged to accompany the children. He tried to say that he had nothing with him. “Are there any documents? Is your child coming here? Sit down and accompany me." So he ended up in our carriage, a very good man, but terribly scared. And I didn’t know what to do. I was completely confused. Children began jumping out of some carriages. And we remained sitting in the carriage. And suddenly the train jerked, some of the cars uncoupled and remained on the rails, our first cars with those who remained in them moved off. Mom later told me that she found out the fate of our train and was told that the train was lost, and those children who fled to the steppe were shot by the Germans. And we moved on; They were either driving or standing, there was no food, no water, someone was dying. The worst thing was there was no water. I wrote poetry. Here's one of them.

About half a year ago I came across an interesting article online. In St. Petersburg, a diary was found in a landfill, kept by a young girl from besieged Leningrad. I read it avidly, from beginning to end.

I’m writing it down, my hands are getting cold...

“Our daughter Miletta Konstantinovna, born on 11/VIII 1933, died on IV 26, 1942 - 8 years 8 months and 15 days old.

And Fedor lived from 7/IV 1942 to 26/VI 1942 - 80 days...

On IV 26, the daughter died at one in the morning, and at 6 in the morning Fedor was breastfeeding - not a single drop of milk. The pediatrician said: “I’m glad, otherwise the mother (that is, me) would have died and left three sons. Don’t feel sorry for your daughter, she’s a premature baby - she would have died at eighteen - for sure ... "

Well, since there is no milk, I donated 3/V 1942 to the Institute of Blood Transfusion on 3rd Sovetskaya Street, I don’t remember how many grams, since I have been a donor since June 26, 1941. Being pregnant with Fedya, she donated blood: 26/VI - 300 g, 31/VII - 250 g, 3/IX - 150 g, 7/XI - 150 g. It's no longer possible. 11/XII - 120 gr. = 970 gr. blood..."

12/I - 1942 - I’m writing it down, my hands are getting cold. We had been walking for a long time; I walked across the ice diagonally from the University to the Admiralty along the Neva. The morning was sunny and frosty - a barge and a boat stood frozen in the ice. I walked from the 18th line of Vasilyevsky Island, first along Bolshoy Prospect to the 1st line and to the Neva past the Menshikov Palace and all the colleges of the University. Then from the Neva along the entire Nevsky Prospect, Staronevsky to the 3rd Sovetskaya...

At the doctor’s appointment I undressed, he poked me in the chest and asked: “What is this?” - “I will be a mother for the fourth time.” He grabbed his head and ran out. Three doctors came in at once - it turns out that pregnant women cannot donate blood - the donor card was crossed out. They didn’t feed me, they kicked me out, and I had to get a certificate for February 1942, a work card and rations (2 loaves, 900 grams of meat, 2 kg of cereal), if they took my blood...

She walked back slowly, slowly, and three children were waiting at home: Miletta, Kronid and Kostya. And my husband was hired as a sapper... I will receive a dependent card for February, and this is 120 grams. bread a day. Death…

When I got onto the ice, I saw a mountain of frozen people on the right under the bridge - some were lying, some were sitting, and a boy of about ten, as if alive, had his head pressed against one of the dead. And I so wanted to go to bed with them. I even turned off the path, but I remembered: at home three people were lying on one single bed, and I was limp, and I went home.

I walk through the city, one thought worse than the other. On the 16th line I meet Nina Kuyavskaya, my childhood friend, she works in the executive committee. I tell her: “They kicked me out as a donor and didn’t give me a certificate for a working card.” And she says: “Go to the antenatal clinic, they must give you a certificate for a work card”...

The apartment has four rooms: ours is 9 meters, the last one, the former stable of the owner of four houses (19, 19a, 19b, 19c). There is no water, the pipes have burst, but people still pour into the toilets, the slurry pours down the wall and freezes from the frost. But there is no glass in the windows; in the fall they were all broken from a bomb explosion. The window is covered with a mattress, only a hole has been made for the pipe from the potbelly stove...

She came home cheerful, and the children were glad that she came. But they see that it is empty, and not a word, they are silent, that they are hungry. And at home there is a piece of bread. Three times. For an adult, that is, me - 250 gr. and three children's pieces - 125 g each. Nobody took...

I lit the stove, put on a 7-liter saucepan, let the water boil, and threw in dry blueberry and strawberry herbs. She cut a thin piece of bread, spread a lot of mustard and salted it very strongly. They sat down, ate, drank a lot of tea and went to bed. And at 6 o’clock in the morning I put on trousers, a hat, a jacket, a coat, and go to take my turn. The store just opens at 8, and the line is long and 2-3 people wide - you stand and wait, and the enemy plane flies slowly and low over Bolshoy Prospekt and fires from cannons, people run away, and then again stand in turn without panic - creepy ...

And for water, you put two buckets and a ladle on the sled, and you go to the Neva along Bolshoy Prospekt, line 20, to the Mining Institute. There is a descent to the water, you cut a hole, and you scoop water into buckets. And we help each other lift the sleigh with water up. It happens that you go halfway and spill water, you get wet and again you go, wet, to get water...

The umbilical cord was tied with black thread

The apartment is empty, except for us, everyone has gone to the front. And so on day after day. Nothing from my husband. And then came the fateful night of 7/IV 1942. One in the morning, contractions. While I dressed my three children, I packed my laundry into a suitcase, tied my two sons to a sled so they wouldn’t fall - I took them to the yard to the trash heap, and left my daughter and suitcase in the gateway. And she gave birth... in her pants...

I forgot that I have children outside. She walked slowly, holding on to the wall of her house, quietly, afraid to run over the little one...

And in the apartment it’s dark, and in the corridor there’s water dripping from the ceiling. And the corridor is 3 meters wide and 12 meters long. I walk quietly. She came, quickly unbuttoned her pants, wanted to put the baby on the ottoman and lost consciousness from pain...

It’s dark, cold, and suddenly the door opens and a man comes in. It turned out that he was walking through the yard, saw two children tied to a sled, and asked: “Where are you going?” And my five-year-old Kostya says: “We’re going to the maternity hospital!”

“Eh, children, your mother probably brought you to your death,” the man suggested. And Kostya says: “No.” The man silently took up the sled: “Where should I take it?” And Kostyukha is in command. A man looks, and there’s another sled, another child...

So I took the children home, and at home I lit a cinder in a saucer, a varnish wick - it smokes terribly. He broke a chair, lit the stove, put a pot of water - 12 liters, ran to the maternity hospital... And I got up, reached for the scissors, and the scissors were black with soot. Wickie cut and cut the umbilical cord in half with such scissors... I said: “Well, Fedka, half is for you, and the other for me...” I tied his umbilical cord with black thread number 40, but not mine...

Even though I gave birth to my fourth, I didn’t know anything. And then Kostya took out from under the bed the book “Mother and Child” (I always read at the end of the book how to avoid unwanted pregnancy, but then I read the first page - “Childbirth”). Got up, the water warmed up. I tied up Fyodor’s umbilical cord, cut off the extra piece, smeared it with iodine, and didn’t put anything in his eyes. I could hardly wait for the morning. And in the morning the old woman came: “Oh, you didn’t even go for bread, give me the cards, I’ll run.” The coupons were cut off for a decade: from the 1st to the 10th, but there remained the 8th, 9th and 10th - 250 grams. and three 125 gr. For a three days. So the old woman didn’t bring us this bread... But on IV 9/4 I saw her dead in the yard - so there’s nothing to blame her for, she was a good person...

I remember the three of us were chopping ice, holding a crowbar in our hands, counting: one, two, three - and they lowered the crowbar and chopped off all the ice - they were afraid of infection, and the military threw ice into the car and took it to the Neva so that the city would be clean...

The man through the door said, “The doctor will come tomorrow morning.” The old woman went to buy bread. The sister came from the maternity hospital and shouted: “Where are you, I have the flu!” And I shout: “Close the door on the other side, it’s cold!” She left, and five-year-old Kostya stood up and said: “The porridge is cooked!” I got up, lit the stove, and the porridge froze like jelly. On April 5, I bought a large bag of semolina at the Haymarket for 125 grams of bread. A man walked with me from Sennaya Square to the house, saw my children, took a coupon for 125 grams. bread and left, and I started cooking the porridge, but the porridge never thickened, although I poured all the cereal into a three-liter saucepan...

Freeloader, or maybe victory

So we ate this porridge without bread and drank a 7-liter pot of tea, I dressed Fedenka, wrapped her in a blanket and went to the Vedeman maternity hospital on the 14th line. Brought it, mommies - not a soul. I say: “Treat your son’s belly button.” The doctor responded: “Go to the hospital, then we’ll treat you!” I say: “I have three children, they were left alone in the apartment.” She insists: “Still lie down!” I yelled at her, and she called the head doctor. And the head doctor yelled at her: “Treat the child and give a certificate to the registry office for metrics and a child’s card.”

She turned the child around and smiled. She praised the umbilical cord that I had tied: “Well done, mom!” She noted the baby's weight - 2.5 kg. She put drops in her eyes and gave all the information. And I went to the registry office - it was located on the 16th line, in the basement of the executive committee. The queue is huge, people are standing behind documents for the dead. And I’m walking with my son, the people make way. Suddenly I hear someone shouting: “You’re carrying a freeloader!” And others: “It brings victory!”

They wrote out the metrics and a certificate for the child’s card, congratulated me, and I went to the chairman of the executive committee. I went up the wide stairs and saw an old man sitting at a table with a telephone in front of him. He asks where and why I am going. I answer that I gave birth to a son at one in the morning, and there are three more children at home, in the corridor there is ankle-deep water, and in the room there are two front walls, and half-wet pillows are stuck to them, and slurry is creeping from the walls...

He asked: “What do you need?” I answered: “My eight-year-old daughter, sitting under the arch on a sled at night, got cold, she should go to the hospital.”

He pressed some button, three girls in military uniform came out, as if on command, ran up to me, one took the child, and two took me by the arms and escorted me home. I burst into tears, suddenly tired, I barely made it home...

On the same day we were moved to another apartment on our own stairs - the fourth floor. The stove is in working order, two glasses from our bookcase are inserted into the window, and on the stove there is a 12-liter pan with hot water. The antenatal clinic doctor, who also came to the rescue, began to wash my children, the first - Miletta - bare head, not a single hair... The same with my sons - skinny, scary to look at...
At night there is a knock on the door. I open the door and my sister Valya is standing in the doorway - she was walking from the Finland Station. There is a bag behind my shoulders. They opened it, oh my God: pure rye bread, soldier’s bread, a loaf - a fluffy brick, a little sugar, cereal, sour cabbage...

She is a soldier in an overcoat. And a feast like a mountain, what happiness!..

The radio worked for 24 hours. During shelling - signal, go to shelter. But we did not leave, although our area was shelled several times a day from long-range guns. But the planes didn’t spare bombs, there were factories all around...

Eyes overgrown with moss

26/IV - 1942 - Miletta died at one in the morning, and at six in the morning the radio announced that the bread quota had been increased. Workers - 400 grams, children - 250 grams... I spent the whole day in queues. She brought bread and vodka...

She dressed Miletta in a black silk suit... She was lying on the table in a small room, I came home, and two sons - seven years old Kronid and five years old Kostya - were lying drunk on the floor - half of the little one had been drunk... I got scared, ran to the second floor to the janitor - her daughter graduated medical school She came with me and, seeing the children, laughed: “Let them sleep, it’s better not to disturb them”...

9/V - 1942 My husband came on foot from the Finland Station for a day. We went to the zhakt to get a cart and a certificate for the funeral at the Smolensk cemetery. Besides my baby, there were two unidentified corpses... One of the dead was dragged by the legs by the janitors and her head banged on the steps...

You couldn't cry in the cemetery. An unfamiliar woman carried Miletta and placed her carefully on the “woodpile” of the dead... Miletta lay at home for 15 days, her eyes were overgrown with moss - she had to cover her face with a silk cloth...

At 8 o'clock in the evening, the husband left on foot to the station: he could not be late, otherwise he would end up in court, and the train ran only once a day.

6/V 1942 - went out for bread in the morning. I come, and Kronid is unrecognizable - he’s swollen, he’s become very fat, he looks like a Vanka doll. I wrapped him in a blanket and dragged him to the 21st line to the consultation, and there it was closed. Then she carried him to the 15th line, where the door was also locked. I brought it back home. She ran to the janitor and called the doctor. The doctor came, looked and said that this was the third degree of dystrophy...
There's a knock on the door. I open: two orderlies from the Krupskaya hospital - about my daughter. I closed the door in their face, and they knocked again. And then I came to my senses, my daughter was gone, but Kronya, Kronechka, was alive. I opened the door and explained that my son needed to go to the hospital. She wrapped him in a blanket and went with them, taking the metrics and the child’s card.

In the waiting room, the doctor tells me: “You have a daughter.” I answer: “The daughter died, but the son is sick...” The son was taken to the hospital...

There are no tears, but my soul is empty, creepy. Kostyukha is quiet, kisses me and looks after Fedya, and Fedya lies in the children’s galvanized bathtub...

On the radio they say: “Every Leningrader should have a vegetable garden.” All public gardens have been turned into vegetable gardens. Carrot, beet, and onion seeds are given free of charge. We have onions and sorrel planted on Bolshoy Prospekt. There was also an announcement on the radio: you can get a pass to Berngardovka, to Vsevolozhsk, and Valya works in my hospital there. I'm going to the 16th police station, to the chief. He writes me a pass, and I ask him for a nanny while I’m leaving. And he calls a woman - Rein Alma Petrovna and asks her: “Will you go as her nanny?”, pointing at me. She has three sons: one is seven, the second is five years old, and the third is a newborn...

She went to my house. And I’m on foot to the Finland Station. The train was traveling at night and there was shelling. I arrived in Vsevolozhsk at five in the morning: the sun, the leaves on the trees were blooming. Valin hospital is a former pioneer camp.

Across the river, in the gazebo...

I’m sitting on the bank of the river, the birds are singing, there’s silence... Just like in peacetime. Some grandfather came out of the house with a shovel. He asks: “Why are you sitting here?” I explain: “Well, I came to dig a garden, but I don’t know how to hold a shovel in my hands.” He gives me a shovel, shows me how to dig, and he sits down and watches me work.

His land is light and well-groomed, and I try. I dug up a large area, and then my Valya came: she was carrying bread and half a liter of black currants...

I sat down, little by little I plucked some bread, ate some berries, and washed it down with water. My grandfather came up to me and said: “Write a statement - I’ll give you two rooms and a small room in the attic...

So I’m not far from here, but I took them out of the city. Fedenka was taken to a 24-hour nursery, and Kostyukha’s grandfather looked after him...

6/VI - 1942 Went to Leningrad for Kronid. He was discharged from the hospital with diagnoses of grade III dystrophy, paratyphoid fever, and osteomyelitis. Not a single hair on my head, but about 40 large white lice were killed. We sat at the station all day. I met women who explained: this is a cadaverous louse, it doesn’t run to a healthy person...

At five in the morning we got off the train. My son is heavy, I carry him in my arms, he can’t hold his head up. When we got to the house, Valya looked at him and cried: “He will die...” The doctor Irina Aleksandrovna came, gave an injection and left silently.

Kronya opened his eyes and said: “I’m great, I didn’t even wince.” And fell asleep...

And at 9 am the doctors came: the head physician of the hospital, a professor and a nurse, examined me and gave recommendations. We fulfilled them as best we could. But he still couldn’t hold his head up, he was very weak, he didn’t eat - he only drank milk. Day by day I got better a little...

I tried to make money. She made girls' tunics, subtracting from those that were made for men. And the customers brought me some stew, some porridge. And I sewed everything as best I could.

I sewed a gray suit for my blond Suit at home. One day I was at work, and so as not to get bored, he sang loudly and loudly: “ Partisan units occupy cities." The hospital doctors were sitting in a gazebo across the river, they heard a clear child’s voice and couldn’t stand it, they ran across the river along a log, asked them to sing again, and treated them to candy...

Fedora took the already hopeless man from the nursery

My husband came on leave and said that he was being transferred from sapper to driver in Leningrad. “I’m a sailor,” he said. “And I don’t know any locomotives.” The boss even hugged him: “This is even better: take the new boat to the Central Park of Culture and Culture, load it onto a freight train and off to Ladoga!..”

6/VII 1942 We are going to Leningrad. Kronya should be admitted to the hospital, but I donate blood - I need to feed the children... I sit with my sons at the Institute of Blood Transfusion - where donors are fed lunch. We sip the soup, and the war correspondent films us and, smiling, says: “Let the front-line soldiers see how you are here in Leningrad...” Then we go to the Rauchfus hospital. There they take my documents, and Kronya goes into the ward. My son spent four months in the hospital...

A 26/VII 1942 Fedenka, Fedor Konstantinovich, died. I took him from the nursery, already hopeless. He died like an adult. He screamed somehow, took a deep breath and straightened up...

I wrapped him in a blanket - an envelope, very beautiful, silk, and took him to the police, where they wrote out a funeral certificate... I took him to the cemetery, picked flowers here, they put him in the ground without a coffin and buried him... I couldn’t even cry...

On the same day I met doctor Fedinoy kindergarten- kindergarten of the Baltic Shipping Company. She told me that her son had died, we hugged and kissed...

To Ladoga

On July 1, 1942, I came to the personnel department of the shipping company. She said: she buried her daughter and son. And my husband serves in Ladoga. I asked to become a sailor. She explained: I don’t need cards, I’m a donor, I get a work card, but I need a permanent pass to Ladoga. He took the passport, stamped it, and wrote out a pass to Osinovets, the Osinovets lighthouse. I issued a permanent ticket for the second carriage of the train going there - free of charge, and on the 10th I arrived at my destination. They let me through to the port. They explained to me that the boat carrying evacuees and food (they managed to unload the cargo well) sank to the bottom during the bombing. And the crew - the captain, mechanic and sailor - escaped and swam out. Then the boat was raised, and now it is under repair...

The boats usually went to Kobona, carrying live cargo... From time to time I went to the city. But I couldn’t take even a grain, even a speck of flour with me - if they found it, I would immediately be shot. Over the pier, where there are sacks of cereal, peas, flour, an airplane will fly low, make a hole, supplies will spill into the water - disaster!

My Kostya made sourdough and baked pancakes - the whole pier came to us. Finally, the head of the port ordered to supply us with flour and butter. And then the loaders and military men took the soggy mass out of the water and onto the stove. They eat it, and then they twist their intestines and die... How many such cases have there been!

So I came to court again. I have two work cards: I give one to kindergarten, they are happy there, Kostyukha is well looked after, and I give the other card to Valya. When I go to my grandfather, who has our things, he pampers me with cabbage and berries. And he also gives me apples, I take them to Leningrad, to Krona’s hospital. I’ll treat the nanny, the doctor, deliver letters from Osinovets and back to Ladoga, to the port... So I’m spinning like a squirrel in a wheel. People’s smiles are a gift, and my husband is nearby...

27/VIII. Summer passed quickly. Ladoga is stormy, cold, windy, the bombing has intensified... We are sailing to Kobona. The cargo was unloaded, and the boat sank not far from the shore. This happened often, but this time the Epron team couldn’t lift the boat...

Kostya was sent to the water pumping station (Melnichny Ruchey station). He's on duty for 24 hours, he's free for two...

At that time, Kronya was transferred from the Rauchfus hospital to the hospital on Petrogradka, and was told that an operation would be performed there. They put it on women's department. The women fell in love with him - they taught him to sew, knit...

At the end of December, Krone had a piece of her jaw removed, and in January she was told to take her home.

3/I 1943 Again I went to ask for housing, they offered me an empty house in Melnichny Ruchey. In this house the stove was lit - it smokes, there is a wonderful stove with a brick oven... And nearby the military dismantled the houses log by log and took them away, and they approached us, but we intimidated them, and they did not touch our house.

The ground is soft

Kronid and Kostyukha were taken home, and the kindergarten bought us cards. My husband Kostya is close to going down to work - he will cross the railway track, and there will be a water pump. While he is on watch for 24 hours, he will cut, split, dry, and bring home firewood.

To warm up the house, you have to fire the stove continuously. Warm, light, lots and lots of snow. My husband made a sled. On the way, a horse will pass by the house two or three times a day - children on a sled. They take with them a box, a broom, and shovels - they will collect the horse’s “goods” and pile the manure near the porch - it will be useful for future plantings...

15/III 1943 A huge pile of manure has accumulated at the porch. “Leningradskaya Pravda” just published an article by Academician Lysenko that it is possible to grow a rich harvest of excellent potatoes from potato sprouts. To do this, you need to make a greenhouse, stuff horse manure, then cover with frozen soil and add snow. Cover with frames and plant sprouts after two to three weeks.

We had to remove five internal frames in the house, and they did something like what was written in the newspaper.

22/III 1943 The ground is soft. We bought a bowl full of sprouts from an old neighbor for 900 g of sweets. We spent a long time planting - it was a troublesome task...

5/VI 1943 The frosts were very severe, and the whole earth froze - it was a great pity for our labors. And now it’s time to plant cabbage, rutabaga, and beets. They dug day and night.

Opposite are two two-story houses. Former kindergarten of the Meat Processing Plant. No one guarded them, but no one touched them - state...

In Leningrad, I got hold of onion sets - these are the “onion” things: they last forever, once you plant them, they grow for several years. Onions are growing by leaps and bounds, but I don’t know how to sell, and I don’t have time - the market is far away. I’ll cut it into a basket and take it to the sailors. They wrote me a thank you note. Then they themselves came to me, carefully cut them with scissors and took them to their place...

Hope is born

...I haven’t taken up the diary for a long time - I didn’t have the time. I went to the doctors. They examine me, listen to how you are growing there, and I talk to you, stroke you - I dream that you will grow up affectionate, pretty, smart. And you seem to hear me. Kostya has already brought you a wicker crib - very beautiful, we are waiting for you with great joy. I know that you are my daughter, growing up, you know what Miletta was like...

I remember the blockade - it protects the brothers. I'll leave, and the three of them will be alone. As soon as the bombing begins, she will throw everyone under the bed... Cold, hunger, she will share her last crumbs with them. She saw me dividing bread, and she shared it too. He’ll keep a smaller piece for himself and more mustard, like me... It’s scary to be alone in a four-room apartment... Once a bomb exploded in the yard - glass from the neighboring house is falling down, and ours is staggering...

...I have not donated blood since May, because I know that it is harmful to you, my beloved daughter. I went out to get some logs, neighbors were walking by, they were happy, the blockade had been broken...

The soldiers of the 63rd Guards Division gave my husband Kostya a new officer's fur coat. Full of people, noise, jokes, happiness! Is the blockade behind us?

2/II 1943 I tell Kostya: “Run for the doctor, it’s starting!” There is a 12-liter saucepan with warm boiled water on the stove, and water is already boiling in a 7-liter one. And yesterday, February 1, a doctor looked at me, put drops in my eyes, gave me iodine, a silk thread in a bag and said: “Don’t go to the hospital - it’s wildly cold there, and it’s all littered with dead people, and it’s located 4 kilometers from home.” ..."

The husband returned, his face was gone. He didn’t find a single person in the hospital - apparently they had quietly taken off at night... People told him that the weak were sent to the rear, and those who were stronger were sent to the front...

The contractions are already intolerable. The children are sleeping in the room, I’m standing in the trough, wearing Kostya’s shirt. He is opposite me, scissors at the ready... He’s already holding your head, you’re already in his arms... His face is bright... I take you in my arms. He cuts the umbilical cord, smears it with iodine, and ties it. There is a bath next to it. If you pour water on your head, your head is hairy. You yell, the children jump up, the father shouts to them: “Get in your place!”

He wraps you up and carries you to the bed...

I wash myself, Kostya takes me in his arms and also carries me to the bed. And he pours water out of the containers, washes the floor, washes his hands and comes to watch you sleep in the crib. Then he comes up to me, strokes my head, says good night, goes to sleep on the kitchen bench... The moon outside the window is huge...

In the morning, my husband tells me: “I didn’t sleep all night, listening to my daughter snoring. And I thought: let’s call her Nadezhda, and we will think that Hope and joy await us. It’s fortunate that he was there, delivered the baby, named you, otherwise he was still at sea...

Resin River

5/II 1944 Kostya was sent to Terijoki (translated from Finnish as the Resin River), and my mother Zoya, Dagmara and Lyusya came to see me from Udmurtia.

Zoya’s husband Ivan Danilovich Rusanov (they shared joy and sadness together for many years) was killed at the front...

Before the war, Ivan Danilovich and we were united by joint work: he was the chief engineer (graduated from the Forestry Academy), my Kostya was a mechanic, and I was a mechanic - I repaired and issued tools at the tool station at the Aleksandrovsky logging station. Mom Zoya and he got married on the eve of the war, in May, and left...

And now Ivan Danilovich is already lying somewhere in Sinyavino... And Kostya and I are young, healthy, but we lost our daughter and son, they were carried away by the blockade...
27/V 1944 We moved to Kostya in Terijoki. There are a lot of empty houses there. We settled in a small one with a veranda. Under the windows there is a garden, currant bushes, a well three steps from the porch. A huge barn and cellar - unexpectedly this cellar turned out to contain wine. Fifteen minutes to the station...

19/XI 1944 Kostya and I were invited to a holiday in honor of Artilleryman’s Day, we had to go to Leningrad. The children were put to bed - the train departed at three in the morning. Shortly before leaving, one military man brought us a bucket of gasoline. I covered the bucket with my basin, it stood next to the potatoes...

We arrived in the city, went to a meeting in honor of the holiday, and visited my mother. And then they didn’t know that our house in Terijoki caught fire. Fortunately, the children were not harmed - their neighbors saved them by pulling them out through the window. And when they pulled him out, the house collapsed. After the fire was extinguished by the arriving military, the following items were discovered missing: Kostya’s memory of her father - a heavy silver cigarette case, a box of bonds (maybe, of course, burned), and the military loaded the wine from the cellar onto a car and took it away.

They blamed everything on Kronya: as if he went with a candle to get potatoes, and a spark got into the gasoline...

20/XI - 1944 We got off the train, approached the house and saw ashes... Kostya says: “If only the children were alive, I don’t care about the rest!” It’s true: if we have an apartment in Leningrad, we won’t die. The neighbor comes out and reassures: “I have children, but without clothes, undressed...”

And they told how the house collapsed. They came up, and there was a 7-liter aluminum pan on the stove, like it was alive. They touched it and it fell apart. The box of wheat did not burn, but the grain turned out to be bitter...

We called Leningrad at military unit to Labor Square. Kostya called Valerian, he immediately took the car, loaded us up (and we took the frozen potatoes and two live rabbits and took them to Leningrad). In the city, kind people brought clothes to the children - at least they didn’t die, they just became very hungry.

Did you really survive the war?

We ate the rabbits and the potatoes. The children did not go to school because they were naked. And from the railway Sergei Nikolaevich brought me work, collecting cartridges for street lighting, they paid very little...

You'll stand in line for bran. If you stay overnight, they will give you enough bread in the morning. You soak the bread, the bran, scalded with boiling water, swells, you mix the soaked bread and bran, crush frozen, boiled potatoes, and put it in a frying pan. Aroma in the rooms. Let’s eat and get to work collecting cartridges...

Finally the spring of 1945. Did we really survive the war?.. My husband and I went to Repino. They painted the beds and walls. They hired me as a management manager, at night I guarded the dachas of artists and performers - none of them lived there. The prisoners lived. Even one night they gave me a gun, unloaded. I put it on my right shoulder. And the prisoners are looking at me from the windows, cackling... The night ended, I came home and burst into tears. In the morning Kostya went to the board of directors to demand that they pay me off.

I'm still breastfeeding Nadya. We go to the bay with the whole family. Father and sons catch fish: perch and even pike perch. Shallow: fish gather near the stones, and there is a haze on the side of Kronstadt; naval sappers are clearing the fairway of mines. There are a lot of fish - we’ll collect a whole gas mask of little things, and we’ll string the big ones onto a branch and carry them over our shoulders. The shores are deserted, not a soul, but the sand is hot...

We take a bath and put the youngest Nadya in some water (she started early, at ten months). Cheerful, jumping, fussing, squealing, wants to catch a fish, but it runs away. The children laugh, and my father and I feel good...

Kostya is dragging two huge pike perch over his shoulder. We are walking along the alley, and a huge fellow comes towards us. First he looks at the pike perch, and then let’s hug! It turned out that Kostin is the head of the BGMP, captain. My husband was sailing with him on some ship...

Siege diary of Misha Tikhomirov

I keep the siege diary of my brother Misha as the most expensive relic that I have accumulated over my long life.

Our family lived in Leningrad on Dostoevsky Street, next to the Kuznechny Market, opposite the house where the writer’s museum is now. We had two rooms in a large communal apartment. Parents who graduated Pedagogical Institute named after Herzen, taught mathematics at school. My brother and I first studied at the 14th exemplary (really wonderful!) School named after N. Ya. Marr on Rasstannaya Street, where my father worked. When the war began, we were transferred to a school on Tambovskaya (I don’t remember its number, I know that in 1943 it became the 367th male school), not far from the Novokamenny Bridge. Mom worked at the railway school on Shkapina Street, near the Baltic Station. Several pre-war years, the fifth member of our family was Boris, my father’s nephew, who came from the village
to Leningrad to study at the institute.

My brother and I had a happy childhood. Peace and harmony reigned in the family, on Sundays we went to museums, for walks along the Neva, and sometimes we went to Pavlovsk, in the evenings dad read aloud to us good books. Before the war, we spent every summer in our father’s homeland in the village of Krasnye Gory, Luga District. My father's older sister lived there with her family. (There I got a second name - Ninel, originally invented by the boys to tease me. Misha calls me this name in his diary.) It was the happiest time for all of us, I think, for us children, which gave us the main supply of physical and moral strength for the future. strength It was there that Misha’s keen interest in nature, especially in the animal world, arose and grew stronger every year. If in our Leningrad apartment we had a cat, guinea pigs, and a snake, then in the village we had a hawk, wood mice, and a viper. Misha observed their behavior, made notes, sketches, and then in Leningrad he took out and read serious books about these animals.

In the Red Mountains we learned that the war had begun. Surprisingly, ominous thuds began to be heard from afar: the Germans were bombing Luga. And it became clear: the old life is over, a new one begins...

In the fall, German planes almost every day at the same time (if I’m not mistaken, around half past six in the evening) flew in to bomb Leningrad. The agonizing wait for the bombing had already begun for about four to five hours. After the air raid signal, most of the residents of our apartment sat down in the place that someone declared to be the most reliable: in the gloomy hallway, among galoshes and coats, near the main wall. They listened to the firing of anti-aircraft guns, the whistle of fragments, the roar of explosions and wondered, languishing, whether it was close or far, carpet bombing or not... And Misha and dad went to the kitchen. From there, from the window, one could see a large piece of sky above the squat Blacksmith Market. They watched through the window the beams of searchlights, the glow of fires, and tried to determine where the bombs fell. We also saw the glow, as it later turned out, of the burning Badayevsky warehouses.

And in December they stopped bombing us. The Germans chose what they probably believed was a more effective weapon for exterminating Leningraders: starvation. What did it look like in Everyday life, and also about many other things, sixteen-year-old Misha talks in his diary. He wrote it every day (only two days were missed due to illness) for 159 days,
from December 8 to May 18, when, during a terrible shelling of the city at a tram stop on the corner of Mezhdunarodny and Kievskaya, he was killed by a shell fragment that hit his temple.

Nina Tikhomirova

Leningrad. December 8, 1941 I begin this diary on the evening of December 8th. The threshold of real winter. Before this time there was still little snow and frosts were mild, but yesterday, after -15╟ preparation in the morning the frost hit -23╟. Today it stays at 16╟, blowing heavily all day. The snow is fine, unpleasant and frequent, the tracks are snowy, and because of this the trams do not run. I only had 3 lessons at school.<...>

Since the diary begins to be written not only not from the beginning of the war, but
from the middle of a regular month, it is necessary to make a short list of all the interesting things that happened with us and how we live at the moment.

Leningrad in the siege ring; It was often bombarded and fired upon from guns. There is not enough fuel: the school, for example, will not be heated with coal. We sit at 125 degrees. bread per day, per month we receive (each) about 400 grams. cereals, some sweets, butter. The workers' situation is slightly better. We study in a school bomb shelter, because the windows (due to a shell) are clogged with plywood and it’s freezing cold in the classrooms. At home we live in one room (for warmth). We eat 2 times a day: morning and evening. Every time there is soup with khryapa or something else (quite thin), cocoa in the morning, coffee in the evening. Until recently, they baked flat cakes and occasionally cooked porridge from Duranda (now they are running out). We purchased about 5 kg of wood glue; make jelly from it (one slab at a time)
with laurel leaf and eat with mustard.<...>

9/XII. Fifteen-degree frost without strong wind, no snow. The trams are not running after yesterday's skidding. All day long, from morning to evening, there is distant shooting. The children at school were given thin soup without cards (and perhaps they will continue to be given in the future). Still, it means something. During the day we have no light from 10 to 5 o'clock; the most unpleasant last hours are dark. Today we dragged firewood from the yard, which is the easiest to pull together. In the afternoon we ate glue, drank hot coffee with bread, lard, half-crumbs and biscuits. In total, of course, the minimum amount, but still this is an extraordinary event. In the evening we are thinking about sewing mittens. I'll go to bed at 8 o'clock.

10/XII. The weather is still the same. At 6 o'clock in the morning my mother went to the line for candy. But unsuccessfully. When she returned, she reported good news: Tikhvin had been captured by our troops again. A good mood. Mom sewed the first pair of mittens. Wonderful: spacious and warm. Today we made soup for two days from 10 potatoes (2 pans), a mug of beans, a little noodles and a piece of canned meat. This is already the third two-day potato soup (after cabbage it seems remarkably tasty). The day after tomorrow cabbage again. This is the last and already incomplete barrel. There is no glue in the city. We'll stock up more if necessary. So far it works great for us with various spicy seasonings.

The fireplace is flooded. Now we will warm up, drink coffee, read aloud. The mood is cheerful. We are waiting for newspapers with details about the battles for Tikhvin. I now write my diary as soon as the light comes on, that is, after 5 o’clock.

11/XII. Today there is still good news: our troops took Yelets. German losses - 12,000 killed and wounded, 90 guns, etc. A terrible mess is brewing in the Pacific Ocean. Japan is working hard. There were 4 lessons at school due to the cold. This will probably continue to be the case. Everyone gathered at home before 2 o'clock. So we warmed ourselves up with tea. Issued with crackers and biscuits. We'll have lunch later today. There are persistent, but in my opinion false, rumors about an increase in bread. There is talk about evacuation through the ice of Lake Ladoga. Some say walk 200 km, others say 250 km. In the second decade, they will give you a little more table oil. If you can get it, great.

Today I am planning to sew mittens for me.

12/XII. After a strong overnight snowstorm - a wonderfully clear, frosty morning and afternoon. The streets are covered with snow. Trams don't run. I tested my new mittens - they’re a real lifesaver for my hands: they don’t freeze at all.

Mom received 800 grams in the first ten days of the month. black pasta. They were immediately divided into 10 parts. It turns out - an incomplete tea cup per pot of soup. We already made soup with cabbage today. Dad went to school for night duty today. I took 2 blankets and put on freshly sewn quilted cotton burkas: after all, it’s bitterly cold at school! The same burkas will probably be ready for me by Wednesday. Now the three of us are sitting and reading. We'll go to bed soon.

In general, we have all lost terribly weight; there is weakness in our legs and body, which is especially felt after sawing wood (even for a very short time), walking, etc.

The body feels cold all the time, trivial scratches and burns do not heal for a very long time.

I try to prepare my homework at school and go to bed earlier.

13/XII. There are no newspapers yet, but the report seems to be good. 2<-е>The German offensive on Moscow failed, with huge losses for them. Hitler is furious, fussing, trying to come up with at least some explanation for the failure of the “lightning war.”<...>

The plan for the evening is this: we warm ourselves by the fireplace, drink coffee, read “The Sea Wolf” and go to bed early. Tomorrow we are also thinking about getting some sleep. Today we started preparing for the 20th: we cut off part of our 2-day bread allowance. So on my birthday, everyone will receive one of these at the feast.

14/XII. We slept until 11 o'clock. The day passed unnoticed. We were cooking dinner, I finished the microscope, but haven’t tested it yet. In the evening we read 3 chapters of “The Sea Wolf” by the fireplace. The electricity should be turned off soon. Until then, I’ll read “ Big hopes"Dickens. Then - sleep. In the evening I left four slices of dried bread (very small), a piece of cracker, half a spoon of melted sugar (I didn’t drink tea to avoid swelling), and thanks to Sunday, chocolate will be given out. Today I counted the remaining glue - 31 tiles. Just for a month.

The mortality rate in the city has noticeably increased: coffins (plank, haphazardly knocked together) are carried on sleighs in very large quantities. Occasionally you can see a body without a coffin, wrapped in a shroud.

15/XII. Fog at a frost of 25°. Everything is covered with frost. Huge snowdrifts accumulate along the edges of the streets. It is difficult to clear snow, so even after a not particularly heavy snowfall the trams do not operate. It's hellishly cold in the school's bomb shelter. It is very difficult to exercise. Mom is going on night duty today.

For some time now, everyone has been noticing that my face is swelling. I think that’s why I should reduce my water intake as much as possible. In general, about swelling: this disease is very widespread in the city. Swelling begins in the legs and spreads to the body; many die. Once again I emphasize the enormous mortality rate among the population. When returning from school, you can see up to 10 coffins.

16/XII. After 1 lesson, due to the cold, they tried to move us to 11<-ю>school; It turned out that it was even worse there: the lack of light added to the cold. I don’t know how I sat through 2 lessons. Then we went to the dining room. We ate a bowl of soup. Now we are waiting for mom to arrive. We lit the stove, we'll cook dinner.

Our units continue to push back the Germans. There were no newspapers yet, but it seems that we are busy: Klin, Yasnaya Polyana and several other stations and towns.<...>

In general, it is sometimes difficult to keep the mood cheerful enough. Both cold and malnutrition take their toll.

17/XII. There are 3 lessons at school: the physicist is sick. In addition to the thin soup, they gave us microscopic doses of jam. At least something!

We warmed up at home with coffee. In the morning they left him some bread. Mom gave us a piece of leftover lard. I picked up my portion in the fireplace on chains and left it in the evening. I will eat and read in bed (I installed a light bulb to my bed). Today we have already put aside the third portion of bread for the fund on the 20th.

The report seems to be good: in addition to a few towns, our troops took Kalinin. In general, newspapers arrive very poorly.

A little more about school activities. At school I hardly write at all, I only try to understand and remember the most important things. Most of the time I don’t prepare lessons at home. I grab only the most important things.

18/XII.<...>The cabbage is coming to an end - only half a barrel remains. Then we’ll somehow get out.

We all can’t wait for the blockade to be broken, and hence the improvement in the situation of the population. For some reason, everyone in the queues on the street is sure that this is the last difficult month.

19/XII. It's my birthday eve. The day after school is busy with intense work: sawing wood, splitting it and carrying it into the rooms. Before work, we refreshed ourselves with the remains of black crackers and pieces of lard with cocoa. For an exhausted body, work seems terribly hard, and your hands get tired quickly. One way or another, in general, we cut quite a lot of firewood. The rest were stacked tightly and covered with boards (against thieves).

We'll have lunch soon. This is not harmful, because hunger makes itself felt, and the whole body aches from fatigue. Then we’ll light the fireplace, wash our heads and feet, and change our linen. For tomorrow, my mother bought a small piece of duranda for 10 packs of cigarettes (expensive!). She will make a festive porridge out of it and the beans. Today we cut off the last (4) share of the fund for tomorrow's feast.

The Germans remembered us: yesterday there was a short but very intense shelling, it seems, of the Kuibyshevsky district. Today someone was also shot at.

20/XII. I'll write a little about the holiday. He's still ahead.

The gala dinner is now being prepared.

We worked a lot at school today, me on snow removal (2 hours), dad on dismantling the house for firewood for school. Then I and some other guys went to the factory to buy potbelly stoves for the school and teachers. The plant is near the Volkov cemetery. A great “revival”, a mass of coffins... On the way we saw an uncleaned corpse in the street... All this makes a very difficult impression. We brought 5 stoves to the school. Then, having loaded the one left for dad onto the sled, the three of us drove home. Mom was terribly happy: the stove was cast iron, cylindrical, the weight would be approximate. 4-4.5 pounds. They attached a samovar pipe to it and flooded it. The result is great. The room immediately became warmer. Mom was also lucky: she got 1200 grams. bombs.1 Now these are very profitable candies.

21/XII. Sunday. We slept in the wonderful warmth from the stove for up to 10 hours. Then we warmed the soup on it and ate it. Mom went on duty. We received bread. Already cut off a piece for the fund New Year's holiday. It's 2 o'clock now, but it's already getting dark. A heavy shelling of the city had just ended. The Germans began to stir, probably due to the warmth (t -2╟).

My birthday was great yesterday. I received a wonderful collective gift: a sketchbook and a superbly published book “Ancient and Modern Art” with wonderful reproductions of the works of great masters. Then lunch began, consisting of two bowls of thick soup with cabbage, porridge of boiled soybeans with noodles (I think I’ve never eaten something so delicious!), and coffee. To accompany the coffee they were given a piece of boiled kidney, canned cod, bread, and honey. From all this, everyone made a dozen miniature sandwiches and ate them slowly and with pleasure. In addition, my mother gave me several sweets for bedtime. The body felt full!

The fireplace was not lit, because the magnificent stove heated the room very much.

22/XII. Zero. There are puddles on the streets. Warm humid wind. After school we arrange a “worm kill” for the sake of our new victory: Budogoshch is taken<ь>and several more<олько>stations. This is of enormous importance for Leningraders.

Yesterday after the shelling there was alarm. Planes flew, anti-aircraft guns clapped. We didn't hear any bombs. This is the first alarm after a long calm. Everyone feels weak in the body, but we expect improvement by the New Year.

23/XII. Slight cooling again. The streets are slippery. There is no new news from the front; they are going to assign grades to schools for the first half of the year. Weakness in the body. The only thing that consoles me is the hope for a quick improvement.

The climate conditions in the room thanks to the stove are simply wonderful. We heat it every day and cook soup for the day too.

The issue with products is very worrying: almost nothing has been received, and the third decade has begun.

P.S. Here’s news from the front: I’m pasting in a clipping from “Len. Truth." Apparently, the Germans will have to flee so as not to be surrounded.

24/XII. The mood is not very cheerful, because I haven’t heard the report yet, there is severe weakness throughout the whole body and especially in the legs. Everyone feels it.

Today we learned at school about the death of our drawing teacher. This is the second victim of hunger... The literature teacher no longer goes to school. Dad says this is the next candidate. Many teachers can barely walk.

It would be possible to live if we received our small ration on time. But it's very difficult.

Yes, Leningrad needs immediate help now.<...>

25/XII. Today Ninel did not go to school due to a cough and runny nose, and most importantly, to preserve her strength. When we arrived at school, we learned the great news: “Increase in bread!” Now we get 200 grams. This is an indicator of our position at the front. The population is in high spirits. Everyone perked up.<...>

26/XII. Due to the lack of light, there were no classes at school.<...>

We all have a temperature<тела>stays at +36╟.

This is weakness. It is felt especially strongly after walking or even the most trivial work. In view of this (and the grades are set), I will not go to school until the holidays. I'll lie down and rest. I feel weak, I think, after chopping wood, then clearing snow at school and going to buy stoves.

Everyone is waiting for new improvements. The increase in bread is already a huge step in saving Leningraders.

Now we are drinking evening coffee. Then we read “The Sea Wolf”. I try to drink my coffee empty: tiny crackers are dried from the bread... the biscuits are split into small pieces... there is a teaspoon of jam. Later, while relaxing in bed, I will read and slowly absorb it all... Wonderful!

Now given in<оздушная>anxiety. Planes fly, but probably ours. We don’t pay attention to them or to the anxiety.

27/XII. I didn't go to school. At home I chopped some wood for the stove, then lay down.
From Tatyana Aleksandrovna’s mother took out Belyaev’s book “Lord of the World.” It seems very interesting. It's frosty outside - 20°C. Glass in patterns. We'll flood the tiles soon.<...>

Interesting examples of prices at the flea market: bread - 300 rubles. kg; rice - 500 rub. kg; oil - 750 rub. (all this, of course, in very small quantities).

In general, everyone is talking about a quick and dramatic improvement in food supply, and this is the most important thing now.

28/XII. Twenty degrees below zero again. In the morning, planes are buzzing over the city, but there is no alarm. Information Bureau reports are not yet available.

In the morning my temperature was 35.8, and by the middle of the day it had risen slightly. Tomorrow I think I won’t go to school again.

At the flea market today we exchanged about 500 grams of vegetable oil for 3 lumps of sugar and a box of matches. It's great. After all, in terms of fat, for the last month we have had an exceptionally starvation ration (after all, it has not yet been possible to get butter on ration cards!).

Sample prices at a flea market: a box of matches 10 rubles.

There are a great many coffins around the city today...

29/XII.<...>The weakness continues. I won't go to school until the holidays. “Lunches” on Ninel and my dad takes me. On the 1st, on the occasion of the holiday, in addition to soup, he will receive some other pancakes for us.

On the 3rd there will be a performance for the guys in B. Dramatichesky, and also a “3-course lunch”. I'm already thinking about going to see it.

I haven’t heard the reports yet; but it seems that our affairs at the front are good: Babino station has been taken.

30/XII. I feel much stronger and better. The 3-day idleness was not in vain. Mom got 75% brisket instead of meat. We all think this is very good.<...>

Dad goes to school to stay on duty all night. They provided him with cocoa, a mug, sweets and anything else they could (at school they installed a stove, and he would drink cocoa at night).

31/XII. Dad came home from duty with good news: our landing force landed in the Crimea, occupied Kerch and Feodosia and was smashing the Germans. On instructions from Comrade Stalin, Crimea must be cleared of German scum!

Today we celebrate New Year. In the evening there is a feast (as far as possible, of course). By evening, I will attach a copper bracket with a lamp (lower than the old one) above the table. We will live with 2 lamps.

Everyone is in a good mood, my legs are strong. Now guns are firing somewhere - the city is being shelled. Mom went on foot (trams don’t go) to school - we need to get cards for the new month.

1/I. Twenty-five degree frost. Clear. The report is good: Kaluga and Kirishi are occupied by us. Dad went to school, but there was nothing particularly festive there. We received new cards.

Yesterday’s celebration went well: there was “a great abundance of food” on the table, and the mood was wonderful. Toasts were made to the victory of our units, to the meeting of all of us together after the war, safe and sound. We went to bed early.

2/II1 . Frost 27╟. On the street it literally cuts off your nose and cheeks. I went to photo stores looking for films for my “Liliput” (I thought I would photograph at least one destroyed house, but I didn’t find anything). There was no light all day. The cabbage is running out. There is an unsolved problem of soups ahead (there is no smell of cereal in the store, but there is so-called “rye flour”, which you don’t want to take). The oil has not yet been received either.

3/III1. There is no light yet. A Christmas tree party for students was scheduled for today with a performance at the B. Drama Theater and lunch. When we got there, we found out that it was being postponed to the 7th. We decided to wait and get the flour. We'll wait for the cereal. I will have to give up photography, because there is no film anywhere. I will work with a microscope. If only they would give light.

Nineli's stomach deteriorated. Everyone is very worried. We feed her lard and often give her wine. Now a spoiled stomach is an extremely unpleasant thing.

There is a shortage of bread in the city. The shops are empty. We hope that we will receive it in the 2nd half of the day.

4/I. Products have not yet been received. Yesterday my mother took 400 grams for testing. “rye” (durand) flour. The tea cup was poured into the soup. Today we tried it: it gives taste, but that’s all. We add cabbage just for taste, a small tea cup at a time. Today my mother baked some of the flour and coffee grounds into flat cakes and in the evening cooked it into a thin paste. It all seems wonderfully delicious.

The danger with Ninelin’s stomach seems to have passed, but dad complains of weakness in his legs. In general, the city is dying out... The mortality rate is enormous; there is no light; no water; trams are not running; the streets are covered with snow, which is not removed at all... The city needs urgent help.

5/I. It's warmer. We used this: we dragged all the firewood from the yard into the rooms. During the day there was heavy shelling of several areas of the city.

Everyone is in a sad mood: Dad’s legs are not improving, Ninel is complaining about his stomach again, the food situation is disgusting. Our bodies are weakened and require urgent support... We are all especially worried about dad’s condition right now. There is nothing to eat, and difficult times lie ahead.

By evening the stove becomes our centerpiece. To save kerosene, we sit with two nightlights; if there is an interesting book, we read a little... The view from the outside is probably quite dull and gloomy.

The situation at the front has not yet changed. The ring is obviously being torn from the outside;
We have no improvements yet, although the city is going through a terribly difficult time... the city is freezing...

6/I - 42 I sat at home all day. The weather is unstable, the temperature stays around 10°C. Today we have heard some rumors about the capture of Mga, which is, of course, very important for us.

Around half past four, heavy artillery shelling of our area began. Two guns fired frequently, for 15-20 minutes. Ninel was on the street at that time, and we were worried about her, since the shells were splashing very close.

Yesterday, instead of cereal, we took 2 kg of “rye” flour. We sorted through the crackers and crushed small fragments in a mortar. We will make porridge from all this in the near future, and as for the future, we will hope for the best, since otherwise the situation is simply hopeless.

Tomorrow is the 7th - the day on which our Christmas tree was moved due to lack of light. We will wait for the light this evening.

7/I - 42 At eleven o'clock we went to the theater. The light was given, so the Christmas tree took place. In the bitter cold we watched “The Noble Nest.” The actors played poorly; in coats, felt boots and fur coats. Then - lunch. Upon entry into the dining room there was great hustle and bustle. Lunch: a tiny pot of soup, 50 grams of bread, a thin cutlet with a side dish of millet and a little jelly. Bread and cutlets were brought for the evening feast: it was supposed to be porridge made from “rye” flour.

Tomorrow - classes, although there is a rumor about extending the holidays. There is nothing particularly comforting from the front, but thanks to the Christmas tree or dinner, the mood is cheerful (and the light after 4 days of darkness).

8/I - 42 Yesterday evening, at my request, my mother took out the remains of the doctor's microscope (tripod and tube) from Yura. Yura obviously stopped being interested in it, and therefore I will try to appropriate these remains, especially since, having attached the lens and eyepiece from my “goat” to the tube, I got a thing that was tolerable for work. This microscope is not like our current ones; Made, I think, in London.

Returning from school (we stayed at home, since the holidays were extended until the 15th, which is wonderful), dad brought more sad news: Vladimir Petrovich Shakhin and another teacher died of exhaustion. All this has a depressing effect, and coffins and coffins are being transported around the city in huge quantities... Legs
Dad is not better yet, mine also feel weak; better yet! But there is nothing comforting from the front.

9/I - 42 The frost is no easier. Again I sat at home all day. Dad got 4 kg of flour (waste from the production of molasses) from school through an acquaintance for 25 rubles. per kilo. I have already mentioned the properties, testing and evaluation given to this flour. But now, thanks to me, the attitude towards it has improved dramatically: in the encyclopedia I found an article that indicates that the production of molasses produces a certain amount of glucose (grape sugar), which (or which) is now said to be very supportive of the body. In addition, flour can be changed at a flea market. From flour mash with some sugar you get some kind of jam. Everyone likes her, with the exception of Nineli. We drink tea, coffee, etc. with great success with this thing;
Moreover, I eat it “raw”.

Some changes in the city: Baron Klodt's horses were removed from the bridge over the Fontanka; nearby there is a house arranged from top to bottom like a bomb.

People walk around the city like shadows, most can barely drag their feet; on the “high roads” to cemeteries there are a lot of coffins and corpses without coffins; corpses simply lying on the streets are not uncommon. They are usually without hats and shoes... It will be difficult to survive this month, but we must strengthen ourselves and hope.

10/I - 42 Frost over 20╟. Frost. In general, the weather is quite cheerful. Distant gunfire can often be heard; rumors are heard about the encirclement of the Mginsky German resistance center; about the transfer of troops from Leningrad to the East. Obviously, there are fierce battles going on somewhere.<...>

11/I - 42 Frost 25╟. The room cools down much faster. Light was given only for a short time in the morning.

A teacher of artistic embroidery came to Nineli; they had a big project going on: they knit and embroider, and it’s still unknown what they want to do. This teacher lives on our street, dad knows her and says that she is a master of her craft.

We don't know the reports. Newspapers arrive 2 days late. The radio doesn't work, they stopped posting newspapers on the streets. It's difficult to find out anything right away.

12/I - 42 g. In the morning - 26╟ frost with wind. Everything outside is covered with a thick layer of frost. The face and nose are completely torn off. In the morning I worked on increasing the magnification of the microscope. I brought the eyepiece glass as close as possible. The diameter of the field of view has almost doubled (hence the same increase). I'll work with him properly this evening.

Dad walked to the district council. He is very cold and tired, but says that his legs feel better (thanks to the flour!).

When he returned, he said that although this was not reported, we are making great progress in the South: it seems that Melitopol is occupied and Taganrog is surrounded. If the information is correct, then our affairs are very good: the Germans will have to escape from Crimea.

In addition, there are rumors about an imminent food improvement, which would be very good.

13/I - 42. A magnificent sunny day with the same frost. Magnificent in other respects: they announced the norms of cereals for the first ten days: 400 g per person; In addition, there are rumors from all sides about the encirclement and capture of Mga. Unfortunately, these are only rumors, and we don’t know newspapers and reports for the last few days - no.

It is not possible to work with a microscope yet, since there is no light, and with a daylight mirror, due to its small diameter (a dental mirror is adapted without a handle), it illuminates the object in question too weakly. The day went great, except for a small disagreement between mom and dad. In my opinion, both were wrong.

14/I - 42. We received the newspapers in a few days. In the latter, they read Popkov’s speech “On the food situation in Leningrad,” in which
he says that the Leningraders have survived the most difficult days, that they only have to wait a few days, that Leningrad will soon live a full life. This is already something very promising and definite.

Tomorrow there will probably be no classes at school, because the cold continues to be the same, there is no light and no water. In essence, I don’t even want to study at all. We finished reading the book “Schiller and Goethe” (the edition is already old). It contains parts of the biographies of great poets, illuminates life at the courts of the German dukes, and the position of great people at these courts. On the other hand, the work of Schiller and Goethe is shown too poorly; almost nothing is said about their correspondence, Goethe’s scientific work, etc. It was rated as useful in the sense that it can be taken as a starting point for an in-depth study of the life and work of the greats German poets.

In TPO1, where we are assigned for this month, there is no food yet, and all our supplies (flour and noodles) are already running out. We hope to receive it in the coming days. There was no water or electricity all day, so we had to go to the garage of house no. 3 to get water.

The “glucose” flour has run out, and maybe it’s for the best, because after it a dark coating remains on the teeth and stings the tongue and lips.

15/I - 42 g. Temperature is already 13╟. We stood in lines almost all day - first for bread, then for water. Thoroughly chilled. There were “classes” at school: the guys (as dad said) sat around the stoves and trembled. Ninelya and I will start going to school only on Monday. Then at least somewhat proper studies will begin. The TPO is empty, which is very sad: today they already took a cup of durand flour from Praskovya Ivanovna. It's hard to say what will happen next.

16/I - 42 The day is rich in events. In the afternoon, Alik Portyaki2 appeared completely unexpectedly. I haven’t seen him for 3 months. What a true friend! He brought me about a liter of sweet soy milk! He is now receiving first category; his mother, a doctor, too; Until recently he got such milk. After “killing the worm,” they brewed cocoa with this milk, and in the evening two spoons of it were added to the coffee. Divine, unimaginable, indescribably delicious! Mom will try to exchange half a liter of milk for bread tomorrow. If we can’t do this successfully, we’ll keep it for ourselves. In the evening, the second event: a note arrived from the school principal, in which he reported that dad was being taken to the hospital at school 11 for intensive feeding and recuperation. We don’t yet know whether this was done by the school or at the insistence of the District Council. In any case, this is very good: dad has been complaining of weakness lately, and we were very worried about him, and then he will have a good rest. This evening we will take him to the hospital.

We'll wait until we go to school, only Ninel will go get soup. On tomorrow's flight she will receive dad's cards given for registration. If they are not taken away, then it will be easier for us while he is in the hospital.

Today they gave an electrolimit - 3 hectowatt-hours per day. You will have to save a lot, but still there will be at least some light.

17/I - 42 A very busy day. In the morning we took dad to the hospital, and mom walked to school. Ninel went for lunch instead of dad. I received 6 soups, went to my dad, took him the cards (they still took them!). He seems to have settled in well. Details will be provided later. He will probably stay there for 1 to 2 weeks.

In the evening, the three of us were already cooking soup. Sonya3 came in to warm up, we heated some water for her, tomorrow we’ll give her some firewood. In gratitude, she brought us a cup of wheat from the mill, a lump of dough (my mother would make porridge from it) and a large flatbread (homemade). In the evening we finished the milk, dipping the bread in it - wonderfully tasty.

Tomorrow we will get up at 6, because they will serve cereal at the TPO.

18/I. We got up at 10 instead of 6 and did a good job: in the morning there was a line for cereal (they gave buckwheat and pearl barley), and in the afternoon my mother received our 600 g completely freely. They took both of them, a mixture. In the evening we cook porridge from Sonya’s offerings from yesterday and write a letter to dad. Tomorrow Ninel goes to school only for lunch and to see dad, because mom has to go again to register cards. Regarding school, the following considerations: while dad is away, mom goes to school, we need to carry water and cut wood with her. If we start going to school, it will be very difficult to get soup for many reasons; classes at school are neither this nor that. Tomorrow Ninel will consult with dad: whether to walk or not: everything will be too difficult.<...>

19/I - 42. Frost about 20╟, frost, but no wind.

Mom went to school in the morning with cards, at 11 o'clock in the afternoon Ninel went to dad and got soup. Behind the scenes, she told us how dad lived.<...>

There are frequent fires in the city from temporary shelters: along the way she<Нина>I saw a huge, completely burnt house (corner of Glazovaya and Ligovka).

We decided not to go to school yet - there is no need.

In the evening we ate porridge made from dough and wheat.<...>

21/I - 42 The sky is overcast, but the frost in the morning is 30°. The sun is slightly indicated in the sky by a light circle. We have been living without dad for five days now. So far we're getting along well; a little tight with wood. I try to save them as much as I can. They give out another 50 grams. oil, but TPO is empty.

On Ligovka, at the hatch where there is water, it is sad and funny at the same time... A crowd of people with buckets and other vessels are swearing and screaming; they draw water on their knees, spill it, push; The water immediately gets cold and everything around is slippery.

The burnt house is covered in icicles after extinguishing and is still smoking...

In the evening, before firing the stove, I’ll try (for warmth) to lengthen the pipe. Now I go to bed immediately after eating: I feel less hungry.

22/I - 42 The frost is much lighter. Mom and Ninel went to see dad in the hospital. He lives there fine, thinks that 24 will discharge him, because there is a huge influx of weakened people. Finally, a letter arrived from Boris, dated the end of December. He cannot imagine what we had to endure in terms of food supply.<...>

Now very little wood goes into the stove. We save them - it is very difficult to prepare them, and they will be needed in the future. In the evening, the center of our life is the stove. We cook dinner, mom reads something out loud by the light of 2 night lamps. By 7-8 o'clock we finish with the fire and dinner and go to bed to save kerosene and feel less hungry. We have had no light for several days now, but we have endured it and are now used to it.

23/I - 42. On the night of today, Vladimir Nikolaevich Komarov1 died. Tanya ran in in the evening with the news that he was very ill. Mom sat with her until 12 o'clock, then went to bed. Dad predicted this death a long time ago: the deceased was too thin... It’s a busy morning. At TPO we received oil (150 g in total) and 400 g. Greek They were terribly chilled.

Tanya, who held out until the middle of the day, gives up and cries... She had to endure a lot.

We received another cup of millet from Ekaterina Ivanovna, in exchange for half a cup of port wine: her daughter had a bad stomach.

Ninel coughs. In the evening we will arrange a treatment: strong coffee, a spoonful of honey, port wine, then we will wrap you up<ся>and sleep.<...>

25/I. Same 30╟ and wonderful sunny weather. We got up as usual, but during tea, completely unexpectedly, dad appeared! It turns out he ran away from the hospital for several hours. We were all very happy. They staged a good “zamor”, since now<оящим>coffee, although they couldn’t get any bread to go with it - there was none. Dad brought a piece of bread with melted lard. My dad and I cut some firewood (with the current fireboxes I have enough for several<олько>days). At 4 o'clock dad went back.

Yesterday's report is very good: our troops took Toropets. Obviously, there will be a blow to the rear of the Mozhaisk group of Germans.

Water is tight: there is none anywhere. That's enough until tomorrow, then I'll dodge.

26/I - 42 Since morning there is not a drop of water. In -25°C frost, with a children's bath on a sled, after tea we went for water. On Pushkinskaya there was a huge queue at the water hatch. Having frozen terribly, getting wet and freezing, they filled and brought the bathtub. Enough for several<олько>days.

Last night, after standing in line for 11/2 hours, my mother took out the bread. Very lucky: this morning there is no bread in the city. Maybe due to some “warming” it will be baked in the evening.

After going for water during the day to the “starvation,” the stove was lit out of turn.

27/I - 42. Frost persists. Bread in the city is in very limited quantities. Queues. There is no water. We'll try to get some bread tomorrow.

Dad came again. We “got dirty” together, then dad left. The 29th is his birthday. He will probably be discharged from the hospital, and in the evening we will “feast” (as much as possible).

Tonight my mother and I will at least wash ourselves a little. On this occasion, my mother cut my hair bald during the day with scissors. After all, I’m terribly overgrown with hair and dirt!

28/I - 42 In the morning we hunted for bread. We wandered around for up to 3 hours, but got nothing. By the middle of the day they provided electricity and water (in the basements), the frost eased to 24°C. In this regard, we hope to receive bread tomorrow. It's good that dad is not with us! Today we'll get by: we crushed some crackers and buckwheat, cooked some slurry; Mom will give me some “healing flour”, let’s eat some soup.

We haven't seen anything yet, but what's going on in the city! Half (and maybe more) of the population have not received bread for the second day.

Despite the setbacks, all three of us maintain a cheerful mood. In connection with the light, we honor “Lord Golovlevs”, then (early) we will go to bed.

29/I - 42 Yesterday was not destined to end the way I wrote: in the evening dad finally returned. I brought some bread (very useful) and a couple of cutlets and eggs for the holiday.

Today it’s warmer: in the morning it’s 16╟ below zero, it’s snowing. After the greatest ordeals, they finally received bread. Dad's birthday will go well. At least we'll eat plenty of bread! We'll give dad pants and mittens as a gift.

30/I - 42 12╟ frost. This is nothing - it's tolerable. There is still a problem with bread, and with water too. Newspapers have not been published for God knows how long. We don’t know the news, but things seem to be going well at the front. Last night they served what is called a soulful with bread, in addition there was a “great variety” of delicacies and wine.

P.S. Success near Kharkov: Lozovaya was taken, huge trophies, German divisions were destroyed.

31/I - 42 The frost is no stronger than yesterday. In the morning I fetched a baby bath of water from Kuznechny 10. Dad brought a kilogram of oats from school (it was distributed among the teachers). Let's steam it and cook jelly. Things seem to be going well at the front: the Germans got hit in several places.

They also announced the distribution of meat, cereals, etc., but the damn TPO is empty.

1/II - 42 February! It started with the 15th frost. It's already February! Will he bring something with him? In our circle in recent days there has been frequent talk about evacuation, and it’s true: I want to escape from Leningrad. My body was too thin and weakened. They are emaciated and tired, extremely hungry, but there is essentially no improvement...

Tomorrow we will start going to school; I do it every day, Ninel every other day. There will be 3-4 lessons. Generally speaking, I don’t feel like studying at all (due to general weakening, my brain doesn’t want to work properly or concentrate), but I need to study.

It’s good that our offensive is progressing successfully towards Pskov and beyond. In recent days there has been frequent gunfire around the city, and there have been heavy shellings in outlying areas. We hope that the Germans will still be exterminated around our city, and then we will breathe freely!

2/II - 42 First day of school. Firstly: activities around stoves,
in terrible cold; secondly, there is terrible weakness in the legs from walking... Weakness in the legs, throughout the body... We all feel it every second. Terrible months have been lived through, what lies ahead is unknown. Perhaps, unless there is a very sharp improvement, it will be a slow death... If there were a strong place outside of Leningrad, they would have evacuated without any discussion. For now, we'll push on.

3/II - 42. The temperature dropped in the morning again to 18°C. If only it were warmer! Ninel and I didn’t go to school today: we’ve been hunting for meat since the morning. After standing until half past twelve, I received 950 grams. good meat. There is no cereal yet... The news is sad: we have abandoned Feodosia. After all, this is a blow...

It's not fun among us either. Dad has an upset stomach, hence the severe weakness. This worries us very much.

There are rumors of cannibalism: cases of attacks on women and children, eating corpses. Rumors from various sources; so I guess it can be accepted as fact. One more thing: in February, Ninel managed to get a children’s card “by mistake”: this is a very good help.

4/II - 42. The weather is the same. I haven’t been to school, I’ll go only for contact in 2-3 days. I’m writing briefly today: laziness, some kind of fatigue throughout my body... Alik came in; he lives for nothing; brought a bottle of fish oil and a piece of duranda. In the evening we cooked porridge from millet concentrate (from the girls).

5/II - 42<...>Better news from the front: our cavalry unit broke through to the rear of the Germans.

The body still has the same weakness.

Rumors of cannibalism abound. Obviously, there is no smoke without fire!

6/II - 42. Again clear and sunny weather. Frost in the morning within 20╟. Oh, these frosts! Winter is truly unprecedented.

Went to school. We had two lessons, then, due to smoke that suddenly poured out of the stove, we were sent home. I stood in line for about an hour for water and sawed some firewood. After all this, my body feels terrible weakness and weakness. For the 3rd time after the “starvation” we feasted on fish oil with bread. There's just one more time left. TPO gives out oil. In the morning the queue is terrible, in the evening it’s a little less; Mom is worried: we need to get 350 grams.

On such wonderful days as today, you feel the loss of strength even more strongly and acutely and regret about the past. After all, the sun is almost hot! The day is growing! (at 6 o'clock it is still light). We could go for a walk and a walk.

7/II - 42 The weather is much milder, there is some snow, the air at 16╟ seems a little humid. Nothing remarkable happened during the day. Mom stood in line for barley, but there wasn’t enough. The consolation is that they promise millet and granulated sugar for tomorrow.

There was no increase in bread, despite persistent rumors (they said they heard about the increase on the radio!?). But again, there is no smoke without fire, so we hope that there will be an increase tomorrow. Tonight we will eat the newly invented porridge. Method of preparation: oats, twice ground in a meat grinder, boiled in a saucepan with soda and salt. True, milking with the current forces is a difficult task and generally quite a hassle, but we expect that the porridge will be tasty.

8/II - 42 The weather is even warmer: the temperature is about 14°C. In the morning, terrible, insurmountable weakness.

Cereals, oils, and meat were again brought to the TPO. Mom received all the 11/2 kilos of pearl barley that were due to us. It's still January! There are no February standards yet, even January sugar has not been received.

Will there finally be a dramatic improvement? When? There is nothing new from the front yet; there is something silent about the operations in the V. Luk area, so important for Leningrad...

Lately, if you are on the street, your hearing is sometimes pleasantly surprised: a “sheep”1 is humming on the railway! This is after two or three months of silence and complete necrosis of the stomach<езной>dor<оги>.

9/II - 42. Frost is already only 11╟ in the morning. Because of this, the room is much warmer, despite the small firebox. Was at school today; On the way, near the bathhouse, I saw the uncleaned corpse of a woman. He lay slightly dusted with snow, face down; head disheveled and uncovered...

During the day it was snowing and the weather was mild; This is probably why last year’s winter trips to the Red Mountains are especially vividly remembered now. The memories are pleasant and a little sad: it’s unknown whether you’ll ever see old places again...

10/II - 42. The weather is still the same. I wasn’t at school today: Ninel went to school. After the “freeze” they held a dead hour; I didn’t notice how I slept until 7 pm. The day is generally quite empty. Yes, one more thing: in the morning my mother finally received granulated sugar, quite good.

There are persistent rumors around the city: Popkov has allegedly been fired from his job and arrested. If this is true, then it serves him right.

11/II - 42 Frost 12╟; There was a small snowstorm in the morning, but by the middle of the day the sun came out and it became brighter. Only I went to school today: dad didn’t have lessons.

Today brought a lot of joy: 1), we added more bread, and we already get 300 grams more per day. more bread (employees - 400 grams; personal income 300; children 300 and workers 500), in 2), the report states that our units have liquidated the main unit of the blockade of Leningrad. Unfortunately, nothing else is specified. Where?

In our country lately, the dead hour has entered our lives as firmly as “frozen”; Let's save our strength. It’s amazing how much we’ve gotten used to it and have almost stopped noticing the lack of things like light, water, and restrooms. We live with night lights, we rarely even light a lamp to save kerosene.

Recently, some concern for order in the city has begun to be noticed. In the flea market, which had grown to incredible proportions in the last month, foot and mounted police began to actively operate; slop and sewage thrown into the street are forced to be cleaned up.

The evacuation is now, in my opinion, in full swing. In the mornings you often see sleighs with things crawling towards the Finlyandsky Station, from where trains go to Lake Ladoga. We don’t yet have a high opinion of evacuation: there are rumors that life is not sweet everywhere; and there was hope for an improvement in the situation in Leningrad.

P.S. Tatyana Aleksandrovna received a letter from Tashkent from her evacuated relatives. They write that it is very difficult there: it is difficult to find a job,
Food supply is very tight and wages are low.

12/II - 42 Finally, the first distribution of cereals for February was announced. The norm is as follows: employees 375 g; izd. 250 gr.; children 300 gr. In shops big choice cereals, in most queues there are no.<...>

Our school librarian died. Didn't show up for a few days
At school; when they sent to check on her, they found the corpses of her and her brother in the apartment, and the latter had already begun to decompose. In general, there are still the same many corpses around the city...

When we went to school, we again saw the body of a woman opposite the bathhouse.

13/II - 42 In the morning there was a dank fog at 19╟, but by the middle of the day the temperature suddenly rose to 10╟, it became clear. I was at school. It was disgusting to study because of the smoke pouring out of the stoves. Nevertheless, we are moving forward in both geometry and algebra. I don’t know today’s report yet.

We received millet, the distribution of sugar (950 grams in total) was announced, and tomorrow the distribution of meat and butter is expected.

An interesting case illustrates the difficulty of obtaining and the value of water. In Volkova village<евне>The owner of the apartment on fire jumped out onto the stairs, along which a woman was climbing with 2 buckets of water. Despite all the persuasion and entreaties of the first, the second did not want to give water. As a result, the house burned down...

A large number of deaths in the city still occur due to the inability or impossibility of some families to distribute food according to plan. Some, for example, having received bread in the morning, immediately eat it. Do the same with other products. Many of those who dine in the canteens, taking several dishes at a time, exhaust the entire ration card in the very first days, and then swell from hunger... In this regard, things are going well for us: there is a plan everywhere.

14/II - 42 The day is warm, but cloudy, and therefore quite dark. Today, half of February has already receded into the past, lived together with January in everyday worries and troubles quickly and unnoticed. Winter is flying quickly this year, unlike last years... Before you have time to look back, it’s already March, warmth, light and, one must think, life and strength!

They announced meat standards - 750 grams for all of us so far. There is a very important problem ahead - firewood. She will stand close and demand an immediate decision. Probably at the very beginning of March. What do we do? - It’s a little scary to think about.

According to more or less reliable sources, the Germans are now holding the Chudovo-Lyuban-Tosno region; highway Tosno-Mga; highway Mga-Shlisselburg; Ivanovskoe-Pella-Mountains. Supply of Leningrad and evacuation proceed as follows: Irinovskaya road to Borisovaya Griva; by cars, partly on ice, to the station. Voybokala, then by train to Tikhvin, etc.

15/II - 42 Weather - grace! Only 3╟ frost. True, due to the clouds it is a little dark, but that’s okay.

Unexpected luck: when receiving bread, my mother received 800 grams for 4 packs of Intermission. of bread!!! Hence the wonderful “freeze”.

Today, as a test, we decided to refrain from consuming “glucose” and soda for several days (the first, loose and sweetened, is used by us during “feasts”; the second goes in fairly large quantities in soups and porridges). We suspect both products to have a harmful relaxing effect on the body.

In the evening we arranged a general wash of Nineli. She sat in the round tank and was completely washed by her mother. Over time, we will wash everything like this.

Today you can hear frequent gunfire, shells are whistling over the city, but, in my opinion, they are ours. I still haven’t written anything about the Fedyunintsev’s oath: to be in Leningrad for Red Army Day. If this is the case, then they will be greeted as real liberators.<...>

16/II - 42. Beautiful sunny day at 15╟. The sky turns bright blue in spring. The sun peeked into the room for the first time, at the edge of the window.

I was at school today. It was more fun to study because the sun was shining through the windows and the stoves were burning well.

The second distribution of cereals was announced. Mom received it immediately. I took the buckwheat.

I don’t have time to write much today: the evening’s plan includes giving me and dad a thorough bath. Now I’m snatching time for my diary and preparing algebra between putting wood chips in the samovar to “freeze.”<...>

18/II - 42 The day is similar to the previous ones, except that the haze along the edges of the horizon is thicker and darker. Dad and I were at school today. While walking, my legs feel much better and my arms feel less weak. Certainly, main role Soda was playing here.

The report today is more interesting: on one of the sectors of the front, a German colonel surrendered with his unit - an unprecedented incident! On Len. In the front sector, 1,300 Germans, many bunkers, and dugouts were destroyed in 2 days of fighting.

Today my mother “caught” a driver dealing with groceries at the crowd. We agreed to exchange vodka and cigarettes for cereal; for now for 20 pcs. The “stars” took a bottle of oil from him, although it was quite suspicious. The deadline for the exchange is the 21st, and whether it will be successful will be shown in the near future.<...>

I don't think I wrote anything about what I'm reading now. I recently re-read “Les Miserables”, now I’m reading “Emelyan Pugachev” by Shishkov. I read it with great pleasure: it is interesting and easily written, the historical part is given wonderfully, only Pugachev himself was not successful... what a pity!

19/II - 42 Ninel and I went to school. Dad stayed at home: Mom also went to school. She promised to return later, so the three of us decided to “get dirty.” As soon as the samovar was boiling, the door suddenly opened and a real, living Borya1 appeared!!! in Red Army uniform.

We all rushed to him. We almost cried with joy!

We sat down to the samovar. Borya took out butter, bread, crackers, and condensed milk from the bag. We drank tea and couldn’t stop talking! We ate, of course, not the same either.

Mom came... She cried with excitement and joy; Looking at their meeting, we couldn’t help but cry...

It turns out that Borya did not know about the terrible situation in Leningrad until his last days, and as soon as he found out, he took food and hurried to escape here for a few days. I got here with great difficulty, I didn’t know if we were alive, our house was intact. We were all very excited by this monstrously joyful, extraordinary meeting. I still can’t believe that Borya has arrived!

There is a mass, chaos of thoughts in my head. I’ll put them in order and write them down later: it’s impossible to do now.

Briefly for now: Borya brought 3 large loaves of bread, some crackers, canned food, butter, a jar of condensed milk, pasta, and several concentrates. This is all very useful for us now! There will be a feast in the evening.<...>

20/II - 42 We got a little used to the idea that Borya was with us; he also became calmer towards our species. In the morning, like last night, we ate more bread and butter. A strange feeling of fullness! (though I could eat more!)

Borya left in the morning on various errands (to see the commandant, to have lunch, etc.); Dad, Ninel and I went with a couple of sleds to buy firewood from the Kotovs (they are evacuating the other day and are selling firewood). For 250 rub. We bought firewood and loaded the sled quite tightly. They brought and lifted the firewood - your legs feel strong!

They gave out dried potatoes. Mom received 600 grams for all of us. They let me in
a whole handful in today's soup.

Borya came to the point of death. They are fed well, he even brought bread and cutlets. In general, he almost gets angry when we call our soups and cereals wonderful...<...>

Now we will have lunch, Borya has gone to dinner; Later, over the samovar, we’ll all talk together to our heart’s content.

Yesterday, it turns out, there was an alarm in the evening; really, very short.

21/II. The day is wonderful: very light, but not frosty. I’ve been sitting at home all day, because last night I felt a chill, and today I have a cough and pain
in the trachea and t during the day is almost 38╟. Well, it's nothing. In the evening - mustard plasters, and, one must think, everything will pass.

In terms of food, these days are wonderful. The stomach, unlike the first days of abundance, accepts more bread quite calmly, a pleasant, healthy heaviness is felt.<...>

Mom went to Baltiysky today to find out about the hospital. It’s already the beginning of the 6th, but she’s still not there. True, she said that she would come late, maybe, but we are worried about her - you never know!

I'm finishing writing. I finish early, because in the evening the temperature may rise, and then there will be no time for the diary. If there is something interesting, I’ll write it down under tomorrow’s date.

P.S. There was shelling of the city. The shells were exploding somewhere nearby.

22/II - 42 The weather is even better than yesterday, the room is very light, the sun is shining on the windows again. In the morning we took my mother to the hospital, we were very happy for her: at least she would be able to lie down more and take a break from minor household chores.

After yesterday's mustard plaster I feel much better, t 37, 3, pain
less in the chest. Nineli has something bad with her stomach. Probably from large quantity of bread.

The handicraft teacher came. Among other things, she showed how to knit nets. I think this will be needed in the future.

During the day there was very intense shelling of our area: after all, tomorrow is Red Army Day! You can expect some kind of “gift” tomorrow, like a bombing or shelling worse than today.

Borya is leaving tomorrow. Early in the morning he thinks about getting on some train. He will leave - and, perhaps, again you will not believe that you saw him in reality; everything will seem like a dream... See you sometime now? Where and how will the next meeting take place?

25/II - 42 Missed 2 days: lying in bed, t 39, coughing. Today I’m already up, walking, nothing. Borya left on the 23rd. It was hard to leave... Who knows if we will meet again?

During these days, they announced and gave out more cereals, 100 grams each. butter, 25 gr. cocoa (children and workers are given chocolate), 1/4 liter. kerosene. My mouth is full of trouble, as you can see from this!

Today my mother came to see the “starvation”. It looks a little better, they are fed tolerably there, well with sand and butter, the first one is 50 grams a day, the second one too.<...>

26/II - 42 Frost dropped again to 22╟. What a winter it is! Went
to school, on the way back on Romenskaya I saw a burning house. This is the fourth fire in those places! Four are almost there standing at home were burning! Something really supernatural.

The last distribution of cereals and meat was announced. Sugar is holding back something; Kerosene received today. Today we cooked Duranda porridge (material from Sonya, in the form of payment for cooking soup on our stove).

My mother came from the hospital. I brought cards. Very little was cut from them. Before leaving, we managed to feed my mother porridge and warmed up the coffee.<...>

27/II - 42 A little warmer again. The morning is remarkably clean and clear, but
It's going to get a little windy in the evening. I didn't go to school today. I moved around a little at home: I went for water, took out the slops, sawed - my legs felt tired and weak. It will probably not be eradicated for a long time.

For the “freeze” they wrote a letter to our people. We wrote to them again to inform them about the conditions. This is just in case. Dad has a very negative attitude towards evacuation.

28/II - 42 I am sitting at home as the keeper of housing and everything else. The legs are weak, the body is sluggish. Dad especially complains about this: he says his legs are worse than ever. How can we explain this?

There was a short shelling. The shells landed somewhere very close.

Today my mother returned from the hospital. She feels better, although her legs are still weak - and it’s understandable: the period and amount of nutrition is too insufficient for organisms like ours. During the shelling, many shells fell near my mother’s hospital. Mom brought with her a couple of large fragments.

In recent days, we have been reading Oscar Wilde aloud and individually: Dad bought a volume with his most important works at a flea market.

The portions of bread (and everything else) are again monstrously small; hellish appetite! We dream of a raise again.

March 1, 1942. Sunday, we lay in bed for a long time, listening to the shelling of the city. German shots are heard perfectly.

We spent the whole day cleaning: the soot, dirt and mess we have is terrible. In the evening, my mother received meat (this is the last February delivery); eat it raw, with small pieces of bread - wonderfully tasty, you feel like a wolf.

The weakness in the legs does not go away, although lately we have been eating porridge, liquid, true, but still porridge. Maybe it just seems to us that such “abundant” nutrition can improve organisms like ours. Boris, for example, said: “This is not food, this is not an amendment, and you need to give up everything and get the hell out of here, because you won’t get far on such food, and you won’t survive the second blockade.” The latter is absolutely true.

2/III - 42. Only 4╟ frosts, snow and wind. Went to school with dad; on the way we fully “enjoyed” the shelling; shells screamed over my head, exploding both in front and not so far behind. As I found out later, it went to Volkova Village. There are quite large casualties. For lunch today we have a combination of school soups (my mother went to school and brought a can of soup).

There is an improvement at our school: instead of 25 grams, a bowl of soup will (or rather should) now be dispensed. cereals - 40.

Nothing significant from the front; You don’t really know what to think: either there is nothing to report, or for some reason the successes of our troops are not reported. The rumors are contradictory; there are two branches of them: “do not evacuate under any circumstances, our affairs at the front are very good and a breakthrough is underway” (!?); “Run away from Leningrad, by spring there will be a monstrous mess, because the Germans are under your nose” - the devil will sort them out!

3/III - 42 A snowball flies and covers the courtyards of the city with monstrous abomination; our yard also took on a clean and completely innocent appearance in terms of epidemics: mountains of sewage were for the time being sealed into snowdrifts. On the days when the sun is shining, dripping from the roofs and smelling of spring, they already flow into the street and also smell, but not at all like spring! Brrr!..<...>

4/III - 42 Frost rose, or rather, fell to 18╟. Unpleasant piercing wind, drifting snow, fine and dry. I went to school, my legs are definitely stronger. In the morning there was shelling again; The Germans are apparently now making such morning “awakenings” a habit.

Mom got her last February cereal with oatmeal; In addition, sugar was obtained, albeit soaked. Now our cereal situation is not so bad.

5/III - 42 What a March! 25╟ below zero with a clear sky and wonderful sun.

The weather will be different tomorrow: I’ll go to school for lunch. Lately, it’s starting to smell a little like spring: the sun is noticeably warming up, it’s getting up earlier and creeping further into the room; in clear weather at 8 o'clock it is still light, but everything is spoiled by frost, monstrous frost for March, unprecedented. It's quiet today; Only in the afternoon did gunfire come from somewhere in the distance; there was no shelling or news from the front.

Recently I read: “Emelyan Pugacheva”, “In the Wilds of India” - an empty novel, several fairy tales and stories by Oscar Wilde. I use the sun peeping into the room 100%: I look at ciliates from rotten hay tincture.

6/III - 42 15╟, terrible wind, gray sky. There is only 1 lesson at school, I returned home early. The radio announced shelling, but, in my opinion, there was no close fire. Today we received the first March distribution: 100 g of raisins, 100 and 200 of meat and 200 and 250 of sand. Not a bad start. Somehow March is creeping quickly, spring is approaching, but everything is quiet at the front... Will they have time to do anything for us? I would like to believe that they will succeed, but if not, it is difficult to imagine the future... The lake will melt, how will you supply such a city?

7/III - 42 Today is quite an interesting day. Whether it was thanks to the clear weather or the proximity of spring, the Germans began to move: there were 2 raids, and between them there was a sparse shelling. Our anti-aircraft guns started incredible fire (this is how we learn about the alarm), but both times our planes appeared when everything was already over...

They announced the distribution of cereal: 200 for everyone, 300 for workers.<...>

8/III - 42 International Women's Day. The weather is wonderful, sunny, 11 degrees. We slept longer than usual, cleaned up until 12 o'clock, and then the teacher. Today I learned how to knit nets from her - a very important and useful thing.

At 2 o'clock - the “highlight of the day”, the festive “freeze”. “Zamor” is wonderful:
with cocoa, a jar (Borina) “carp in tomato”, a slightly increased portion of bread, butter, raw meat and raisins. They ate with the greatest greed, and even got some satiety!

The girls have been working in the warehouse lately, so today they brought us pea concentrate.

I’m reading Yuriev’s Notes. The book is very interestingly written, informative, useful; for example, a completely definite, complete picture is created about the Maly Theater in Moscow and its famous artists.<...>

11/III - 42. Again 15╟; clear, sunny, calm. I went to school today, in the first lesson I sawed wood, in the third I listened to the fierce shelling of the city (as I later learned, in the area of ​​my mother’s school). Dad was demolishing the house, he brought another sled of thick boards, he was terribly tired. These days we try to give him more porridge and bread, so that such intense work affects him as little as possible.

The report today is more interesting: on the northwestern section of the front, the line of fortifications has been broken. Which? How significant and important?

The distribution of meat has been announced: for employees - 150 grams, for us - 100 grams. Microscopic issues...

12/III - 42 Once again we can say: “What a March!” - frost 19╟ in the morning. Everyone, except Nineli, is staying at home; Mom received a supply of cereal with oatmeal, the distribution was similar to the first one, meat was received - hence the luxurious “stuff”; “Just like a hawk,” my mother tells us. To save firewood, using material from 3 cans, I raised the grate higher; Alik came in: still cheerful and looking great. He didn’t tell me anything new, he lives in the old way - not so bad. Some large, slipper-like ciliates appeared in the hay tincture. In the field of view of the microscope they swarm and hunt.

Tomorrow is a test in geography. I don’t know much, I don’t want to learn,
but you have to.

There are a lot of people clearing the city of snow. They chip the ice off the rails and take them away; the next snow will cover them again...

13/III - 42 !25╟ frost! God knows what... I went to school, I was pretty cold, the wind got into every place, even my trousers. I brought flour soup from school, my mother brought khryapa; mixture - soup for the evening and morning. I continue knitting the net, I have already tied about half a meter.<...>

14/III - 42 Something unprecedented for mid-March -27╟ in the morning! But the rooks should arrive soon! Ninel didn’t go to school because of the cold, only dad did.

I’ve been knitting a net almost all day, I only showed my nose outside for a short time (I took out the slop and brought water); The frost, it must be said frankly, is brutal: it rips your face clean off.

Summary nothing; In the area of ​​the encircled 16th Army, we have occupied 2 regional points, and there are also advances on our front.

Airplanes buzz all day long and occasionally shoot.<...>

15/III - 42 Sunday, half of March, but still the same damn 25╟. Mom went to Baltiysky in the morning to buy white bread (it is only given to those with a sick stomach, but mom was lucky: she bought a certificate for 25 rubles, according to which you can get it). Arriving home, she exchanged 800 grams. (for 2 days) white bread for 1600 gr. black - absolutely wonderful! Dad went to Sunday work and chipped ice at the school, at least they were fed there. Tomorrow dad is being taken to the city hospital; I again remain the main stoker, water-carrier, etc.

16/III - 42 The frost still persists. We got up early - dad had to be in the hospital by 9 o'clock (Moika 22). Ninel went with him to find out how and what, and, if necessary, bring cards (they need to be handed in, but we haven’t received the oil yet). When I returned from school, I found my dad at home:
They found lice on him, so he had to go home and change his linen. By 2 o'clock he left again. The hospital seems to be good; treatment period 12 days; you can come home; They feed nothing: today for breakfast rice porridge, 150-200 gr. bread, coffee, 3 spoons of sand.<...>

18/III - 42 In the morning -21╟, in the afternoon it reached 15. I just can’t believe that it’s already the second half of March! It's cold at school, classes are around the stoves. Dad ran in
Unfortunately, they are still not given oil, and this significantly reduces the cost of hospitalization. During the day there was quite frequent shelling. Nothing new from the front.

19/III - 42 A little warmer; the sun, sky and air are wonderful. Mom and I are sitting at home today, relaxing. They announced the distribution of oil to everyone except us, the dependents. This is good: dad will probably be given oil too.

A tragic incident occurred in our apartment: Praskovya Ivanovna’s husband, Const.<антин>Alekseich1. He went to a bathhouse somewhere in the middle of nowhere, sent a man from there late in the evening with the news that he was lying there and could not walk... His wife (what a name to give her!), afraid to go to him with a sleigh alone, nevertheless, nothing to anyone did not say. And here is the result! Almost murder.

20/III - 42 In the morning again 19╟ below zero, dank darkness, piercing cold. During the day - better: bright sun, melting; It was already warm to leave school. Here's what's new in the city in recent days: massive snow removal is underway from yards; near Obvodny, for example, there are constantly trucks and sleighs with boxes standing on the bridge, dumping piles of snow over the railings. All day long airplanes, many airplanes, fly and hum over the city; From time to time, terrible anti-aircraft gunfire begins - obviously, an enemy plane appears over the city. They say that Uritsky Square is completely dug up by shells; Quite a large part of Gostiny Dvor burned down.

Our management began to stir: the yard was tidied up a little, a pipe was removed from the wall - water was running.

The crowd has grown incredibly, a mass of valuable things, beautiful dishes, all sorts of things.<...>

21/III - 42. You can expect a turning point: t╟: from -16╟ in the morning, after a sunny day and cloudy evening it rose to -9╟. Tomorrow will show how true this is.

In the morning I was cleaning: after all, today is my mother’s birthday! Mom and Ninel at school; the first - for white bread, the second - for lunch. By three o'clock we had eaten soup; Dad arrived at four, they set up the samovar and staged a ceremonial “freeze.” Mom was presented with a magnificent tea cup that Dad had bought at a flea market. At the “overseas”: black and white bread (we saved it for several days), Borina’s “carp in tomato” and condensed milk, granulated sugar and natural coffe. We ate well; They took away, as they say, their soul.

Today they announced the distribution of sugar and cereals. The standards are old, tomorrow we will try to get both.

Recently, shelling of the city has become more frequent, hitting different areas. The residents are completely calm: either it’s a habit, or they’ve suffered immeasurably more. The report is cheerful: Fedyuninsky’s units are pushing back the Germans and have advanced several kilometers; nothing definite.<...>

24/III - 42 Cloudy, just above zero, melting heavily; a warm, pleasant “wind with a smell” is blowing, the smell of spring. Ninel went to school; I’m sitting at home, apart from going to the technical theater (watching for butter), reading “Pages of the Past” by the artist Rostovtsev.

When dad arrived, we talked seriously about prospects and evacuation. For some reason I really want to leave, but who knows! Dad still doesn’t advise leaving.

25/III - 42 Cloudy, just above zero, light rain is drizzling, puddles grow along the streets, widen and threaten to turn into impassable seas. The lighting is poor and the room is a bit dark. The mood is sad. I was at school: there were surveys, tests, etc. I should go to school tomorrow, but I don’t care! Even if some of them are not certified, we will begin to study for real only on April 1st.

They announced the distribution of cereals and vegetable oil, but the damn TPO is empty. Judging by rumors, a lot of people are evacuating. Involuntarily, we also have conversations and dreams about evacuation and, most importantly, life somewhere in the Ural steppes,
ours. It’s nice to dream, but the devil only knows how to drive. For now, the plan is this: to settle down here better. Mom, for example, will get a job, maybe work in an orphanage; She also wants to give me some work.

26/III - 42 The weather is similar to yesterday, more wet snow with strong wind. The city is flooded, streams are flowing. We received 2 letters: from Aunt Varya and from a friend of my father’s teacher, who was evacuated to his relatives, not far from Kaduy. Our people are very worried about us and are waiting for letters. The teacher writes that living conditions are bad. So evacuate! There was, as expected, heavy shelling.
Scurvy is spreading quite widely in the city.

27/III - 42 Again -10╟... Piercing wind, after yesterday's melting there was black ice. The first day of the holidays, so I went to school only for soups and received 6 pieces of plates (dad is leaving the hospital today). There are rumors at school that from April 1, teachers will be given category I: and it’s high time! In the morning we managed to get vegetable oil. The city is quiet; no planes, no shelling.

28/III - 42 A most beautiful sunny day at a brutal and inappropriate -14╟. Dad and Mom went to school; dad - to the meeting dedicated to the end of the quarter. Having done all the usual housework, I went to hang out at the flea market (there are a lot of interesting things there). I observed a German plane that appeared at high speed over the city, releasing white smoke behind it. The anti-aircraft guns opened fire on him, frequent but not brilliant in their accuracy, and therefore ineffective.

Dad and I returned home almost simultaneously; Dad immediately hurriedly sent me to school, because, it turns out, I had to go to school in the morning for spring cleaning. (It must be said that a decree was issued on the mobilization of the entire population from 15 years of age to clean up the city). He showed up to school late, but made an excuse by saying that they had brought him in to shovel snow: he avoided a scandal. Now every day, for 2 hours, we will be sent to work by the school (this will be until April 8).

Thanks to the meeting, in addition to soup, we were given a microscopic portion of millet porridge. We received 4 porridges and ate them with great pleasure. The rumor about category I for teachers was defined and established in a positive sense.

29/III - 42 The weather is an exact copy of yesterday and, therefore, wonderful. Have a good hunt for butter in the morning; received along with a new issue (to everyone except dependents) 1050 gr. ! I haven't had this much oil in a long time! All that was left of the (oil) cards were crusts - not a single coupon, and this had not happened for several months.

The city began cleaning up. There are a lot of people on the streets with crowbars, shovels and picks. The sun helps them as much as possible. Those evading duty are detained by the police (for example, a crowd was cordoned off and documents were checked).<...>

The Germans scattered: planes appeared over the city several times. The anti-aircraft guns, as expected, fired terribly, but to no avail.

P.S. Waking up today is not quite ordinary: with a roar and the sound of broken glass. Apparently a shell landed somewhere nearby. I searched, but found no traces... Anti-aircraft guns bang again. I'll go lean out and take a look.

30/III - 42 In the morning - frost about 20°, wind, snow, blizzard. My dad and I worked at school to clear snow and ice from the school yard. We were very tired and received summonses noting that we had completed our labor duties. By the middle of the day the weather cleared up, the sun appeared, t╟ rose to almost 0.

Mom and Dad received work cards. Interesting: somehow they will issue category I products in April?

Yesterday I was lucky at a flea market - for 35 rubles. I bought a 50 mm micrometer. I’ll try to “turn” it into binoculars at the flea market or sell it at a higher profit. The distribution of cereals has been announced; employees 300 gr.<...>

31/III-42 In the morning -10╟, therefore during the day it melts terribly. Was at school; I worked in the snow again and was again thoroughly tired. My feet shuffle back... I came back and went to the flea market with a micrometer. I was lucky: I exchanged it for a military luminous compass and a monocle. Now there is something to watch German planes.

...The last day of March. Serious daily classes at school will begin tomorrow, and April will fly ahead at full speed. If it were really warm, spring would be complete. The situation in essence has already been somewhat determined: the norms have been established - one can live; We will not evacuate; For now, the question of bombing, final liberation from the blockade, and the spring offensive remained open.

April 1, 1942. Although it’s -8╟ in the morning, it’s really warm in the afternoon. It's just hot in the sun in a winter coat. At school - 4 lessons at desks, then - labor: we dug a passage through the snowdrifts to the door to the bomb shelter. On the way back we had to choose a road: the streets were partially impassable due to the flood. Three large hawks were seen over the city; Apparently, the migration of ducks and other birds has begun.

At our school, 10th graders were given employee cards; filed a petition to “apply” the same to grades 9 and 8. It would be nice, but unlikely.

“Germans with tails” very often appear above the city at enormous speed. Occasionally they shoot. The newspaper is empty.

2/IV - 42. Looks like winter: gray sky, snow pouring in the morning, -5╟. After school we worked and, in my opinion, it was completely in vain: the snow immediately falls asleep when cleared. After working “in the snow” the last few days, my legs and arms became weak from working with a crowbar and again refused to work...

There is a new subject at school called “anti-chemical protection”. The emphasis is on the fact that “chemical gifts” from the Germans are very, very possible in the very near and unexpected future; half the editorials are devoted to this.

3/IV - 42 Winter at -5╟: everything is covered with rather thick fresh snow, cloudy. Legs have been weak since morning. Damn job! During today's attack there was very heavy shelling of the Moscow region. The shells whistled loudly for an hour and exploded relatively close. Again, for some reason, food portions seem especially small, and the feeling of hunger is especially strong.

...The firewood question arises: the firewood brought by dad is running out...

4/IV - 42 Clear sunny day at -10°. Back at school after school we worked on clearing the snow from the yard, and again we were thoroughly exhausted. There was hope for a rest on the day off tomorrow, but today it collapsed: tomorrow at 9.30 is Sunday (what the hell invented that!). During the day there was another shelling, not frequent, but lasting for several hours. Yesterday we exchanged 1/2 liter. vodka for 5-5 1/2 kilos of oats. The change is successful: you can cook good porridge for a whole half a month (grinding steamed oats through a meat grinder). Distribution of cereals and sugar: only 1 kg of cereal and the same amount of sugar.

P.S. At 7 o'clock - siren: air raid raid. Anti-aircraft guns began to fire and planes began to buzz. I went out into the yard with a monocle. For an hour I watched as “Junkers” flew overhead in pairs, dropped something, and launched rockets. They're still shooting now...

5/IV - 42. The weather is the same. From morning (10 o'clock) until 4 o'clock they worked on Sunday. We were pretty exhausted. On the way there we picked up fragments from anti-aircraft guns, we saw a monstrous bomb crater on the corner of Romenskaya and Ligovka (there was also an alarm last night). The hole is as wide as the street. During the day, while we were working, there was an alarm, but there were no enemy planes.<...>

6/IV - 42 In nature, everything is as before. The night passed calmly, no alarms, no shelling. I left school after the third period because my stomach suddenly hurt. The Germans were flying, anti-aircraft guns were firing; I watched them through a monocular. The summary is optimistic, but again nothing definite.

Information is being collected about the bombing and, judging by what has been seen and heard, the destruction is enormous.

7/IV - 42 Today can be considered the first day of spring, because it melts in the morning, and in the afternoon it is +4.5╟. Airplanes have been buzzing over the city since the morning; “Germans with tails” do not appear. On the way back from school, I picked up and placed in a bottle of water at home several poplar branches, on which there were already green, large, fragrant buds...<...>

9/IV - 42. Cloudy in the morning, but above zero. In the middle of the day the sun came out, it was melting monstrously, the streets were flooded. The fears were justified - the work was extended until the 15th, but there was no work at school today. During these days, very little has been cleared around the city; Today alone will remove more snow than the entire population of the city. Obviously, we will now be presented with different duties all spring and summer, under different sauces. The snow will end, the earth, vegetable gardens, etc. will begin.

Divine “freezing”: my mother received herrings from the TPO (4 pieces and a tail) and a new supply of oil (600 grams). The herrings are large, fatty, thick - divine, with equally divine milk.<...>

11/IV - 42 Cloudy until 4 o'clock, then, as usual now, a clear, sunny evening. Melting is noticeably slightly less; but what the weather of the last few days has done to the city defies description. The rails have “hatched” in most places, parts of the pavements and panels have melted and are drying out. Only some streets are covered with snow, and at the intersections there are huge seas (the sewers have not yet thawed and the manholes are full to capacity). The school cleaned up dirt and sewage after classes. No Sundays have been announced for tomorrow, and this is very good: at least we’ll spend the day off at home.

12/IV - 42 The day can well be called spring, because it is very warm, melting monstrously, the breeze is warm and filled with different smells, many of which awaken a lot of pleasant memories.

At the time when the needlework teacher was supposed to come, I went for a walk along Nevsky. It has already been cleared of snow, has dried up, and is quite lively; on sunny side, on every wall ledge or bedside table, exhausted Leningraders crawling out of their houses with books and newspapers are warming themselves.

In recent days there has been silence over the city: no raids, no shelling. The information bureau reports do not say or explain anything; We now often make guesses and plans for the future, which is covered in such darkness that the devil would gouge out both his eyes...

13/IV - 42 In the morning there is a slight frost, but in the afternoon there is a perfectly clear sky and wonderful sun. The schoolyard was almost completely melted, so after school we poked around just for show. My legs are bad. Rumors: about the cessation of evacuation, about the imminent eviction of certain categories from Leningrad, for example,
with criminal records, speculators, evacuees, etc.

14/IV - 42 In the morning -5╟ below zero, but clear. I went to school instead
to the clinic for dental treatment. I placed several fillings. Last night there was shelling in Moscow<овского>district. One of the shells pierced the roof and exploded on the 5th floor 4<-й>schools. We also did a little shooting this afternoon. Mom received pretty good meat from the TPO and a new supply of vegetable oil. It’s interesting that lately they have given almost nothing for dependents, obviously
in connection with recruitment to the FZO. We are having serious conversations about transferring me from this damn category.

15/IV - 42. Beautiful warm day. On the way back from school, dad and I warmed ourselves against the wall of the house. The sun is shining wonderfully. We listened to the strongest shelling of the city. Obviously, the Germans, having heard about the resolution of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council on the restoration of tram traffic on some routes, set out to win on the first day of the tram's operation.

One of the numbers goes to New<ой>Villages, and this despite the weakness
in the legs, awakens some desires and plans in the head. I’m thinking, for example, on a day off to go to the ring and take a walk somewhere near the Islands. I’ll take with me a slingshot, a jar for animals from ponds.<...>

17/IV - 42 The day is magnificent, and there is no point in talking about the weather. In the morning I went to the International to arrange “craft activities”. I went there (part of the way) by tram, then walked continuously for up to 3 hours. I'm terribly tired.<...>

18/IV - 42 In the afternoon t reached +10╟. I didn’t go to school, because my hopes are high for a successful outcome in the matter with R<емесленным>U<чилищем>. <...>

Now, having grabbed a slingshot, I’ll go hunt sparrows and take a walk at the same time. Today I saw a singing lark above our house - interesting!<...>

20/IV - 42 By 10 I went to the District Council to find out about my affairs. I traveled there and back by tram, so, being very tired, I returned early. The results are as follows: tomorrow, at 10 o’clock, show up for a medical examination at the 18th clinic, then again to the District Council, already for a ticket to R.U. Capture
already have food cards with you...

...Now I’m waiting for dad and Ninel from school, I’m thinking. I decided to take advantage of the time, peace and silence reigning in the apartment and write in my diary the day of the great revolution in my life. A little sad... Of course, the mood is influenced by the beautiful weather, the rooks breaking branches from the trees near the church for their nests, the butterfly (I think it’s a mourning bird - big and black) - the first one! - now flying down the street. At first glance, all this is spring and cheerful, but... war and blockade - 2 words that explain everything. Spring - not available.

On the other hand, you somehow break away from your people, you’ll probably only spend the night at home! In general, some of us will probably very quickly be “picked up” as qualified electricians and welders and sent to enterprises. There will probably be a lot of work in the city for these specialties.

21/IV - 42. Clear day, just like summer (+15╟, +17╟). In the evening, clouds rolled in and rain started pouring down with a thunderstorm, the first thunderstorm of spring! It will probably wash away all the remaining snow and, most importantly, dirt.

My legs are under a lot of stress today: I walked from morning until 6 o’clock (with short breaks). I passed the medical examination, received a permit and finally decided to attend the school. I handed in the cards, tomorrow by 8.30 I must appear at R.U.; Tomorrow I will switch to school meals. Will something happen somehow?

We received a letter from Bori. Nothing new.<...>

3/V - 42 Sunday. The weather is warm but cloudy; in the evening even a little rain. We woke up in the morning to terrible anti-aircraft fire and the howl of shrapnel. There was a raid. It happened again before I left for R.U. Lunch and dinner were given together, so I came home quite early. At night you will need to make mustard plasters: I have a cold, I am sneezing, coughing. My head hurts.

This morning I found a lumberjack beetle on my sheet! Obviously, he had just hatched, crawled out of the chock (it lies under my bed) and came to me.<...>

15/V - 42 g. Quite clear, warm; the grass comes out, the leaves unfurl. There is nothing new at the school, but classes, in my opinion, are still going sluggishly...

Tomorrow is Ninelin's birthday. Let's arrange a “freeze”, which promises to be wonderful. The bread is buried.

The crowd is getting richer: evacuation is soon, and those leaving are selling out.

16/V - 42 g. Cloudy, but warm. At the school they made blanks for rakes, wow work! At 6 o’clock - “freezing”. They brought gifts, I brought radish seeds. I won’t write any more for now: the celebration must begin.

17/V - 42 Sunday. The weather is quite summer: 15°C; It's hot on the trams. “Zamor” yesterday was wonderful. I ate to my heart's content (no wonder I saved up!).

The school gave out lunch and dinner together at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, so I returned home early. I don’t know what we will do. Maybe if Ninel comes early, we’ll go to the cinema.

... Every minute I remember the past, which would be repeated now, were it not for the damned war. And it’s clear: the grass is already big, there will soon be leaves (there are already leaves on the bushes), and the weather!..

And here, from morning to evening, I am at school, and everyone else is staying late at school because of food.

Publication by Nina Tikhomirova