Life And Death In Besieged Leningrad 1941 1944

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

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

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

A pioneering study on the causes and consequences of the Dutch famine of 1944-1945.

Wars cannot be fought and sustained without food and this unique collection explores the impact of war on food production, allocation and consumption in Europe in the twentieth century. A comparative perspective which incorporates belligerent, occupied and neutral countries provides new insights into the relationship between food and war. The analysis ranges from military provisioning and systems of food rationing to civilians' survival strategies and the role of war in stimulating innovation and modernization.

Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Winner of the AATSEEL Book Prize Winner of the University of Southern California Book Prize Honorable Mention, Reginald Zelnik Book Prize “Stand aside, Homer. I doubt whether even the author of the Iliad could have matched Alexis Peri’s account of the 872-day siege which Leningrad endured.” —Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator “Fascinating and perceptive.” —Antony Beevor, New York Review of Books “Powerful and illuminating...A fascinating, insightful, and nuanced work.” —Anna Reid, Times Literary Supplement “A sensitive, at times almost poetic examination.” —Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs In September 1941, two and a half months after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the German Wehrmacht encircled Leningrad. Cut off from the rest of Russia, the city remained blockaded for 872 days, at a cost of almost a million civilian lives. It was one of the longest and deadliest sieges in modern history. The War Within chronicles the Leningrad blockade from the perspective of those who endured it. Drawing on unpublished diaries written by men and women from all walks of life, Alexis Peri tells the tragic story of how young and old struggled to make sense of a world collapsing around them. When the blockade was lifted in 1944, Kremlin officials censored publications describing the ordeal and arrested many of Leningrad’s wartime leaders. Some were executed. Diaries—now dangerous to their authors—were concealed in homes, shelved in archives, and forgotten. The War Within recovers these lost accounts, shedding light on one of World War II’s darkest episodes while paying tribute the resilience of the human spirit.

On September 8, 1941, eleven weeks after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Leningrad was surrounded. The siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation. Anna Reid's Leningrad is a gripping, authoritative narrative history of this dramatic moment in the twentieth century, interwoven with indelible personal accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists on both sides. They reveal the Nazis' deliberate decision to starve Leningrad into surrender and Hitler's messianic miscalculation, the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet war leadership, the horrors experienced by soldiers on the front lines, and, above all, the terrible details of life in the blockaded city: the relentless search for food and water; the withering of emotions and family ties; looting, murder, and cannibalism- and at the same time, extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice. Stripping away decades of Soviet propaganda, and drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Leningrad also tackles a raft of unanswered questions: Was the size of the death toll as much the fault of Stalin as of Hitler? Why didn't the Germans capture the city? Why didn't it collapse into anarchy? What decided who lived and who died? Impressive in its originality and literary style, Leningrad gives voice to the dead and will rival Anthony Beevor's classic Stalingrad in its impact.

Based on an unparalleled access to Russian archival sources and going far beyond the military aspects of other historical works, Glantz's book is a testament to the nearly two million Russians who lost their lives during the battle for Leningrad. 90 illustrations. 16 maps.