In the Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, among the many exhibits, perhaps the greatest interest among visitors is usually a small oblong piece of thin paper with cut-off squares. Each of the squares contains several numbers and one word: “bread”. This is a blockade bread card.
Leningraders began receiving such cards on July 18, 1941. The July norm can be called gentle. Workers, for example, were entitled to 800 grams of bread. But by the beginning of September, monthly norms began to be cut. There were 5 reductions in total. The last one happened in December 1941, when the maximum rate was 200 grams for workers and 125 for everyone else. By that time, food supplies had almost run out. Something was delivered from the mainland by plane. But how much can you fit in them? For three days in December there was no water or bread in the city at all. The main water supply froze. The bakeries stopped. Buckets carried water from holes cut in the Neva. But how many buckets can you carry?
Only with the onset of severe frosts, below minus 40, when a highway was built on the ice of Lake Ladoga - the legendary "Road of Life" - did it become a little easier, and from the end of January 1942, rations began to gradually increase.
Siege bread... In which there was not much more flour than cake, cellulose, soda, bran. The baking dish of which was greased with solar oil in the absence of anything else. It was possible to eat, as the blockade survivors themselves say, “only with water and prayer.” But even now there is nothing more important to them than him.
Leningrad resident Zinaida Pavlovna Ovcharenko, nee Kuznetsova, is 86 years old. I was able to find her at home only on the third try. Every day she has, if not guests, an important meeting, a trip to a museum, or a movie. And she always starts the day - rain, frost, sun - with a long walk, at least 5 laps, along the path of the nearby stadium.
When school agricultural teams began to be created, Zina signed up for one of them and regularly exceeded the daily plan. Photo: From the archive
“Life is in motion,” smiles Zinaida Pavlovna, explaining to me her restlessness. Movement and moderation in nutrition. I learned this during the blockade. That’s why, I’m sure, I survived then.
Before the war, our large family, 7 people, lived in Avtovo,” she begins her story. - Then there was a working outskirts, with small houses and vegetable gardens. When the front began to approach Leningrad, refugees from the suburbs poured into Avtovo. They settled wherever they could, often right on the street in makeshift tents, because it was warm. Everyone thought that the war would quickly end with the victory of the Red Army. But by the end of July it became clear that it was dragging on. Just then they started issuing bread cards. By that time, my three older brothers had volunteered for the front. Dad worked in the port and was in a barracks position. My mother and I received the cards.
Remember the first time you received them?
Zinaida Ovcharenko: I didn't remember it. I, 13 years old, was considered a dependent. At first I received a 400-gram piece of bread, but since September the norm was reduced to 300 grams. True, we had small reserves of flour and other products. Thanks to the vegetable garden in Avtovo!
So did you live there throughout the blockade?
Zinaida Ovcharenko: No, no, the front soon approached there. We were moved to Vasilyevsky Island. During the first winter of the siege, I once tried to get to our house. I tried to walk all the time. Otherwise, she would probably have died - not from hunger, but from the cold. During the blockade, I think that those who were constantly moving and doing something were the first to survive. Each time I came up with my own route. Then go to the market, exchange some things for duranda, drying oil or cake. Then to the destroyed house, what if there was anything edible left there? And then she went to dig the ground in search of some plants.
Now many people no longer know what duranda is (the remains of oilseed seeds after squeezing the oil out of them were considered good feed for livestock). Do you remember its taste?
Zinaida Ovcharenko: The taste was specific, unusual. I sucked it like candy, thereby dulling my hunger. One day she went to our house. It seemed to me that there was no war there, but that all my loved ones were there. I took my duffel bag and a small shovel and went. We had to go through the barriers. The house stood next to an embankment. I didn’t have a pass, and therefore, after waiting for the sentry to turn in the opposite direction from me, I began to climb the embankment. But he noticed me, shouted “Stop!”, I rolled down and hid in an empty house near the Kirovsky market. In one apartment I found plates of dried vegetable oil on the sideboard. I licked them - they were bitter.
Zinaida Pavlovna is 86 today, and every day she begins with a long walk, at least 5 laps, along the path of the nearest stadium. Photo: From the archive
Then I walked through the snowdrifts into the field behind the houses. I was looking for the place where, as I remembered, there should have been cabbage leaves and stalks. I dug snow for a long time and came under fire. The thought haunted me: if they kill me, my mother will die of hunger. In the end I found several frozen stalks and 2-3 cabbage leaves. I was very happy about this. She returned home to Vasilievsky only at nightfall. She lit the stove, washed a little of her spoils, threw snow into the pan and cooked cabbage soup.
Having received the bread, did you manage to leave a little bit of the ration “in reserve”?
Zinaida Ovcharenko: There was simply nothing to leave in reserve. After all, other products were also issued on cards and less and less each time. More often they were replaced with what can hardly be called food. Sometimes I walked across the Tuchkov Bridge to a bakery on the Petrogradskaya side, where they gave round bread with cards. It was considered more profitable because it had more humps.
What is the benefit of the humpback?
Zinaida Ovcharenko: Because there is a little more bread in it. That's what everyone thought. You dry it on the stove and then eat it not all at once, but a little at a time, savoring it.
By the winter of '42, we moved to my mother's mother Anna Nikitichna on Kalinina Street, not far from the current Narvskaya metro station. My grandmother had a wooden house with a real stove, not a potbelly stove, which retained heat longer. I started going to the bakery near the Obvodny Canal. There, bread could be obtained three days in advance.
They probably pinched him on their way home?
Zinaida Ovcharenko: This happened. But I always stopped myself in time, because my loved ones were waiting for me at home. Grandmother died in February '42. I was not at home at that moment. When I returned, I found out that our janitor had taken her body away. She took my grandmother’s passport and her cards. My mother and I never found out where my grandmother was buried; the janitor never showed up. Then I heard that she too had died.
Were there many cases of theft of bread cards from Leningraders?
Zinaida Ovcharenko: I don’t know if there were many, but there were. My school friend Zhanna was somehow snatched from her hands two rations she had just received - for herself and her brother. It all happened so quickly that she didn’t have time to do anything, and in shock she sank to the floor right at the exit of the store. The people standing in line saw this and began to break off pieces of their portions and hand them to her. Zhanna survived the blockade. Maybe thanks, among other things, to this help from people completely unknown to her.
There was a different case with me. I've been standing outside the store since night. There wasn’t enough bread for everyone, so they lined up while it was still dark. When they started to issue it in the morning and I was already close to the counter, some woman began to push me out of the queue. She was large, and I was small in height and weight. I ask: what are you doing? She responded: “You weren’t standing here,” and began to swear. But some old woman stood up for me, and then other people. That woman was shamed and left.
They say that the siege bread was odorless and tasteless.
Zinaida Ovcharenko: I still remember this small, no more than 3 cm thick, black sticky piece. With an amazing smell that you can't tear yourself away from, and very tasty! Although, I know, there was little flour in it, mostly various impurities. Even today I can’t forget that exciting smell.
School meals supported me and my peers. Also with cards. They said: "SHP". Our school at Stachek Avenue, 5, was the only one in the entire district that worked during the siege. There were low stoves in the classroom. They brought us firewood, and we also brought with us as much as we could. Let's flood it and warm ourselves up.
The bread cards were personalized. We received them using our passports. If lost, they were usually not renewed. Photo: From the archive
By the end of the first winter of the siege, mother Anastasia Semyonovna could no longer work in the sand brigade from exhaustion. At this time, not far from our house, a reinforced nutrition office for dystrophic patients was opened. I took my mother there. Somehow we walked up to the porch of the building with her, but we couldn’t get up. We sit, freeze, and people walk by, just as exhausted as we are. I thought, I remember, that because of me, my mother could die, sitting on this unfortunate porch. This thought helped me get up and walk to the treatment room. The doctor looked at my mother, asked her to weigh herself, her weight was 31.5 kg, and immediately wrote out a referral to the canteen. Then he asks her: “Who is this with you?” Mom answers: daughter. The doctor was surprised: “How old is she?” - "14". It turns out that the doctor mistook me for an old woman.
We were assigned to the dining room. It’s about 250 meters from the house. We crawl, have breakfast and then sit in the corridor waiting for lunch. There was no strength to walk back and forth. They usually gave us pea soup, sprats, which did not contain fish, but something like soy sawdust, small as millet, and sometimes a piece of butter.
In the spring it became a little easier. A herb appeared from which it was possible to cook cabbage soup. Many people caught stickleback (emphasis on the letter “u”), a tiny spiny fish, in city waters. Before the war, it was considered a weed. And during the blockade it was perceived as a delicacy. I caught it with a child's net. By spring, bread standards increased slightly, to 300 grams for a dependent. Compared to December 125 grams - wealth!
Talking about the blockade, Zinaida Pavlovna only briefly mentioned how she extinguished incendiary bombs on the roofs of high-rise buildings by joining the fire brigade. How I went to dig trenches to the front line. And when school agricultural teams began to be created, I participated in their work, regularly exceeding the daily plan. I tell her: can you tell me a little more about this, you were probably very tired? She’s embarrassed: “I wasn’t the only one like that!” But she showed me the most expensive award for herself - the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad". I received it in 1943, when I was less than 15 years old.
Of the large Kuznetsov family, three survived after that war: Zinaida Pavlovna herself, her mother and older sister Antonina, whom the Great Patriotic War found in a sanatorium on the Volga. Three brothers died a heroic death on the Leningrad front. Father Pavel Egorovich, who tried to pass on almost all of his work rations to his wife and daughter, died of hunger in January 1942.
The bread cards were personalized. Leningraders received them once a month upon presentation of their passport. If lost, they were usually not renewed. Including due to the fact that in the first months of the blockade there was a huge number of thefts of these cards, as well as imaginary losses. A loaf cost 1 ruble. 70 kopecks. It was possible to buy bread for a lot of money (or exchange it for things) at unauthorized markets, but the authorities prohibited them, dispersing traders.
Composition of blockade bread: food cellulose - 10%, cake -10%, wallpaper dust - 2%, sack punches - 2%, pine needles - 1%, rye wallpaper flour - 75%. Bark flour (from the word crust) was also used. When cars carrying flour to the city sank in Ladoga, special teams at night, in the lull between shelling, lifted bags from the water with hooks on ropes. In the middle of such a bag, a certain amount of flour remained dry, and the outer wet part, when dried, set, turning into a hard crust. These crusts were broken into pieces, then crushed and ground. Measles flour made it possible to reduce the amount of other inedible additives in bread.
Six bakeries operated in besieged Leningrad. Production did not stop for a single day. For a long time, the technology for making bread was hidden; bakers' documents were labeled "for official use" and even "secret". The basis of bread then was rye flour, to which cellulose, cake, and flour dust were mixed. Then each factory baked bread according to its own recipe, adding various additives to it.
The autumn of '41 and winter of '42 are the hardest times. In November 1942, thousands and thousands of people were already dying from hunger and elementary dystrophy. On November 19, the Military Council of the Leningrad Front adopted a resolution “On reducing bread standards.” Here's the beginning:
“In order to avoid interruptions in the provision of bread to the front troops and the population of Leningrad, the following norms for the supply of bread should be established from November 20, 1941:
workers and engineers 250 g.
employees, dependents and children - 125g;
units of the first line and warships 500 g;
Air Force flight technical personnel 500g;
all other military units 300 g; Leningraders lived on such rations for more than a month.
There are several recipes for blockade bread, they are well known, and sometimes flour substitutes in them reach up to 40%. Here are some of them:
Defective rye flour 45%, cake 10%, soy flour 5%, bran 10%, cellulose 15%, wallpaper dust 5%, malt 10%. Various organic ingredients were added to the dough, such as sawdust from wood. Sometimes the quality of the products suffered greatly from this. After all, the share of sawdust was more than 70%.
In addition, at the beginning of the blockade, a large amount of water was added to the bread; as a result, the resulting bread was a liquid mucous mass....(ugh, I’m adding this on my own behalf).
This is how “one hundred and twenty-five blockade grams with fire and blood in half” were born, which entered the memory and consciousness of millions of people as a symbol of inhuman trials, and became the basis for disputes, versions and legends. For many days during the siege, a piece of bread remained the only source of life and the only hope for a person.
Cars with bread are coming to Leningrad!
When the frost crackles over Ladoga,
The blizzard sings about the snowy expanses,
This is heard in that harsh song -
The engines are humming and humming.
More than half a century has passed since that terrible time. But the memory is alive... Not even the memory of people, but the memory of the earth. Now in the vicinity of the village of Kobona, where the Road of Life began, at first glance nothing reminds of the past. Busy villages, sunny weather, on weekends from early morning cars with mushroom pickers scurry back and forth. But in these forests you feel uneasy, even in summer. Harsh century-old forests. They remember. They remember everything. The forest is dark. Trees rush into the sky. And the sky is the same as it was many years ago. Remembering the smell of gunpowder, exploding shells. Then painted red.
It’s good to have a snack with the whole family on the shore of the wide Lake Ladoga, sitting next to full baskets of mushrooms and berries. For some reason, on a warm, carefree day, I think exclusively about the beauty of the landscape. But in winter I won’t risk appearing here. The wound of winter Ladoga is too deep and incurable.
The blizzard is blowing, the vultures are bombing,
Nazi shells are making holes in the ice,
But do not close the blockade ring on the enemy
You stand at the monument to the truck, which is at the turn to Kobona, and look into the distance. And it’s as if you see it all. White road, red snow. You begin to realize what land you are resting on in the summer, where you are in general. On the ground soaked through with blood. Russian blood. This is scary. Maybe we shouldn't disturb these places? No. This is the memory of a great people. But the memory must be alive.
The first to travel along the ice road on November 20, 1941 was a horse-drawn sleigh train of three hundred and fifty teams. The thickness of the ice increased, and gradually Lake Ladoga turned into a huge ice plain, along which trucks walked one after another, under fire. Each one carried one and a half tons of cargo, so such vehicles began to be called “lorry-and-a-half”. Cars often fell into ice cracks, gaps from shells and bombs. The drivers tried to save the priceless cargo. It happened that the engine broke down on the way, and then the driver had to repair it right in the cold, with his bare hands. The fingers froze to the metal, and they were torn off along with the skin. Experienced drivers made two to three trips a day.
Nobody knows how many people died under German bullets and remained at the bottom of Ladoga forever.
Then the lorry rushed through a hundred deaths,
A hundred times the sky fell on them,
But the word "bread" was equal to the word "life"
And if there is life, that means victory.
For residents of Leningrad, the winter of '44 is almost more important than the spring of '45. There were two Victories for them. The blockade was broken on January 18, 1943. During the seven-day battles, they managed to liberate the villages of Sinyavino and Shlisselburg, which are not far from the famous Nevsky patch.
On the left bank of the Ladoga Bridge there is a museum-diorama “Breaking the Siege of Leningrad”. The canvas depicts snow-white snow, spoiled by traces of guns, the swept surface of the Neva. And right under your feet lie the remains of sleepers, charred helmets and rifle barrels. The troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts have united! People who participated in Operation Iskra helped to recreate this.
And the happiest day for Leningraders was January 27, 1944 - the blockade was completely lifted. “The city of Leningrad has been liberated from the enemy blockade!” In the evening there was a fireworks display. 324 artillery pieces on the Field of Mars, at the Peter and Paul Fortress and on the Spit of Vasilievsky Island fired 24 salvos. No one slept that night.
And the city believed in the roar of cannonades,
That the whole country lives with his anxiety.
And therefore the icy road
Cars with bread are coming to Leningrad,
Cars with bread are heading to Leningrad.
The texts of Hitler's speeches have survived to this day. He argued that Leningrad would inevitably die of starvation. Leaflets were dropped on the city from airplanes, and they called for surrender. But the Leningraders did not give up! At times, the situation of people in the besieged city became so desperate that even the most courageous defenders began to feel that a terrible prophecy was about to come true: “Petersburg will be empty!” But the Leningraders did not give up.
900 days. 900 days of cold, hunger and death.
Flashes of war flared in the sky,
Where the battles took place, the fields lie without edge.
And the bread ripens, and there is no price for it,
And gray Ladoga waves roll.
It is beautiful there. Insanely beautiful. It seems like nothing special - you might say this happens in every village, but no. All around is not just a rural landscape - all around is life, for which such fierce battles were fought more than sixty years ago. Joyful voices, endless fields where rye and wheat ripen. And Ladoga. My native Ladoga is so alive, and the waves lazily hit the shore. But what do they want to tell us, these eternal waves?..
Peaceful years fly over her,
Centuries will pass, but people will hear,
Like through a blizzard, frost and thunder of guns
Cars with bread are coming to Leningrad,
Cars with bread are heading to Leningrad.
During the years of the siege, Leningrad was not just a besieged city, whose residents tried to survive despite hunger, cold, bombing and suffering. It has turned into a whole separate world with strong and courageous people, with its own orders and, one might say, with its own language. Over the course of 900 terrible days and nights, many words appeared in the vocabulary of Leningraders used to refer to objects of life under the siege. the site remembered the definitions of the siege dictionary, forgotten after the liberation of Leningrad.
Berklen
Due to the lack of tobacco in the city, Leningraders made it themselves from improvised materials. Berklen is a smoking mixture of fallen birch and maple leaves. They were dried, ground and stuffed with the resulting powder into cigarettes and cigarettes.
Picked out
People who were taken out of besieged Leningrad to other cities were called picked out. This name stuck due to its consonance with the word “evacuated”.
Grammics
Leningraders affectionately called their meager rations - 125 g of bread per day per person - by grams. More than half of the siege bread consisted of sawdust, cake, cellulose and wallpaper dust. For most residents of besieged Leningrad, this bread was the only food, and they ate it without losing a single crumb.
The blockade survivors lovingly called grams 125 g of bread - their daily ration. Photo: AiF/ Yana Khvatova
Dystrophy Shrotovna Shchei-Bezvyrezovskaya
Even under incessant shelling and conditions of terrible famine, Leningraders did not lose their sense of humor, which helped them survive. So dystrophy - exhaustion, which suffered from every second resident of the city - was humanized and a full name was invented for it: Dystrophia Shrotovna Shchei-Bezvyrezovskaya. At that time, meal, crushed and defatted plant seeds used to feed animals, were considered a real delicacy, and one could only dream of a plate of cabbage soup with beef tenderloin.
Duranda
In the first year of the blockade, Leningrad stores still sold cake - compressed bars of waste left over from flour production. Such pieces of cake were called duranda. It was steamed in a saucepan until it had the consistency of porridge, or it was baked, adding the last remaining sugar to duranda cakes: the result was a kind of candy. In the most terrible and hungry first winter of the blockade, Duranda saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Leningraders.
Death corridor
In January 1943, residents of besieged Leningrad in just 17 days laid 33 km of railway on the left bank of the Neva, connecting the besieged city with the country. The siege survivors were building a bridge across the Neva while the Nazis were firing at them from the Sinyavinsky Heights. Due to the increased danger of the work, the Leningraders themselves called the road being built the Corridor of Death. As a result, 75% of all cargo was delivered to Leningrad via this railway, and only 25% via the Road of Life through Ladoga. One train on the railway replaced one and a half thousand lorries. However, by that time the Road of Life had already been glorified, so only Leningraders knew about the Corridor of Death with its terrible name.
The construction site of the railway in Leningrad was called the Corridor of Death. Photo: AiF/ Yana Khvatova
Bloody Crossroads
Leningraders called the intersection of Nevsky Prospekt and Sadovaya Street bloody. During the blockade there was a tram stop here, so this place was very often subject to enemy shelling. In August 1943, at the Bloody Crossroads, 43 people were killed simultaneously as a result of fascist bombing.
Hooks
During the blockade, malnourished dystrophic children being treated in a hospital were called hooks. Due to severe weight loss, small children became so thin that they looked like skin-covered skeletons, and their spines protruded forward, which led to such a comparison.
Swaddlers
Leningraders called pelenashka corpses wrapped in sheets, transported by residents of besieged Leningrad on sleds to the burial site. These sheets and rags replaced coffins for the dead.
People buried the “baby diapers” on their own, without coffins. Photo: AiF/ Yana Khvatova
Povalikha
At first, during the blockade, Leningraders cooked bran porridge. This food was completely tasteless and had no calories. The porridge was called “povalikha” - it was believed that after eating it a person immediately fell asleep.
Sweet land
In the first days of the siege of Leningrad, the Germans dropped a shell on the Badayevsky food warehouses, where 3 thousand tons of flour and 2.5 thousand tons of sugar were stored. As a result of the bombing, the warehouses were completely burned down with all supplies. Exhausted Leningraders ate soil soaked in melted sugar and sold the “sweet land” for big money.
Crystal
The concept of “crystal” appeared in the first harsh winter of the siege and had nothing to do with the noble appearance of glass or tableware. This word was used to describe the frozen and numb corpses that lay on the streets of besieged Leningrad.
Corpses frozen in the streets were called crystal. Photo by D. Trachtenberg. Photo: Archive photo
Devil's Bridge
The Liteyny Bridge has always enjoyed a bad reputation in the city on the Neva: dozens died during its construction, and then it became a place of attraction for suicides from all over the city. When the Nazis began to continuously fire at the Liteiny Bridge because of its proximity to the Road of Life, the residents of besieged Leningrad finally believed that the bridge was cursed and began to call it the Devil’s Bridge.
Khryapa
During the years of the blockade, Leningraders built a kind of vegetable garden in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral: there they grew cabbage. True, full-fledged heads of cabbage did not grow in the area - only individual green leaves came out, which were called khryapa. In the first winter of the siege, khryapa was salted and fermented, and in the second, it was eaten with vegetable oil.
On the square in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral they grew cabbage - khryapa. Photo: AiF/ Yana Khvatova
Death Valley
Leningraders called Lenin Square and Finlyandsky Station the Valley of Death. It was from here that the famous Road of Life began, along which food and everything necessary for the life support of the city was delivered to besieged Leningrad. The Germans knew about this, and they bombed the Finland Station almost around the clock.
Why did potbelly stoves get this name?
Elena, without further ado, I will send you here;))) http://articles.stroybm.ru/obzor/2005120... Museum of the 20th century
As the name suggests, the potbelly stove is a direct consequence of the revolution. She appeared when everyone suddenly began to urinate past the toilet, and devastation ensued. And instead of collecting firewood and restoring central heating, they invented this. Why, in fact, did the stove get such a name? Because she “ate” a lot and gave little. But, despite its gluttony, the potbelly stove, in my opinion, still remains one of the best inventions of mankind. It is very convenient due to its compactness and ease of manufacture. For example, during the war it was made from any gas tank of a blown up car, from a piece of pipe and placed in a dugout or dugout. It gave off a lot of heat. But even in our time it was easily used... I really love hunting in Siberia. And in our hunting lodge we have such a stove. Its peculiarity is that when you heat it too much, it becomes unbearably hot. But if you stop adding firewood, it’s instantly cold as hell. I keep such a stove at my dacha in Vyborg. Because I know that during any disaster our savior is this stove. I remember in 1978/79 it was so cold in Moscow that the central heating radiators burst in many houses. There was terrible cold in the apartments, people went out into the streets to warm themselves by the fires. The fishermen who had modern analogues of potbelly stoves got the best job. And they heated the apartments with these stoves.
Andrey ROSTOTSKY
A. Rostotsky is somewhat mistaken: the stove itself appeared in the 80s of the 19th century. When this name arose is not known for certain, it is quite possible that even before the revolution. But what happened in besieged Leningrad: potbelly stoves were heated with books
While the soldiers fought to break the blockade around Leningrad, the city's residents tried to survive in every possible way. The author of the exhibition, Dmitry Sotchikhin, managed to assemble even wartime stoves. Potbelly stove is a caustic nickname. The stove was called that because this iron structure quickly cooled down, requiring more and more fuel for kindling. But as Dmitry told us, not everything that could heat was used to light the stoves. Not a single tree from the Summer Garden, protected by the state, was cut down to maintain heat in the houses. Leningraders stoked their potbelly stoves with home furniture and books. (Elena, you’ll definitely like this!
Siege life
Romance book and real
My responsibilities
Bath
One day in the summer of '42...
Back to school
Siege fellow countryman
Potato
Victory!.. Victory!..
Siege life
People who know about the blockade from official documents - photographs, films, posters, museum exhibitions - cannot understand how it was possible to exist in those conditions when there was no food, water, heat and light, when every day you could die from a shrapnel shell or bomb and end up under the ruins of a house.
People gradually got used to life under siege. A unique siege lifestyle developed. Life began to change dramatically with the onset of cold weather. The fact that cards were introduced, that the norm for issuing food and bread was reduced and was brought to a minimum limit (250 g for workers and 125 g for employees, dependents and children), which was not sufficient to survive - everyone knows about this. But gradually everything necessary for life disappeared.
It was necessary to think, first of all, about warmth and where and how to prepare food, how to protect children, who needed not only to be fed, but also washed and diapers.
They began to install potbelly stoves in apartments - stoves the size of a small box or bucket with a burner and a pipe through the window. The walls of the houses began to become covered with black streaks of soot.
We also got a potbelly stove. The pipe was led into the chimney next to the fireplace. But it was necessary to have firewood. They were sold in bundles or logs near bakeries, and exchanged for things or pieces of bread. In our family, this concern fell entirely on the shoulders of the mother. She usually went early in the morning somewhere far away, to the Petrograd side or to Vasilyevsky Island, where there were still blocks of wooden houses that burned every night then. Half-burnt houses were dismantled for firewood, and a board or piece of log could be found. Sometimes it was possible to buy a log somewhere near the wood warehouse. To deliver the log to the house, they took with them a large nail and rope. They drove a nail into a log, tied a rope and dragged it home. In winter it was easier than carrying a bundle on your back.
As soon as severe frosts hit (at the end of November), problems began with the water supply. At first the water began to flow in a thin stream, then in drops, and finally the day came when it was necessary to think about where to bring it from. For some time they took water from the basement, but not for long, 2-3 days. Then I had to follow her to another house - on the other side of the street, not far from the Astoria Hotel. There was a tap in the gateway, and people from several houses came there. A queue formed, and when the water began to flow poorly, they stood for a long time, an hour or two. In the end, we had to go to the Neva for water, to the ice hole behind the Bronze Horseman. It wasn't easy for various reasons. We didn't have buckets or a large can with a lid, and the water splashed a lot. The cans and a single bucket were carried on children's sleds over the unevenness of the uncleared streets. I often had to walk with my mother and hold the sled and bucket behind me so that they wouldn’t tip over and the water wouldn’t splash too much. It was very difficult to get water from the narrow ice hole and lift it to the sled. People fell, spilled water, and it immediately turned into ice, and the stairs into an ice slide. It was possible to rise only by helping each other, when someone gave a hand from above.
Taking care of the water also fell on the mother’s shoulders.
It was necessary to take care of the lighting. By the time the cold weather began, there was no electricity, but this did not happen immediately. Gradually, day by day, the voltage decreased, the light bulbs burned barely, and, in the end, only a red hair remained - a wire inside the lamp. With this lighting, everyone moved around the room like shadows. It only helped to avoid bumping into each other, but it was impossible to do anything.
First they burned all the candles. When there was kerosene, they lit a kerosene lamp. When it became an unaffordable luxury, they began to make a smokehouse - a wick lowered into a bowl with flammable oil. As once in the lamps. But smokehouses were called that because they produced a lot of soot; when breathing, soot settled on their faces, especially around the mouth and nostrils. Black circles on the face became an integral feature of the appearance of survivors of the siege.
The main concern, of course, was concern for bread and food. We survived because we were all together. There were 8 of us. And sometimes on Sundays they released relatives from their “barracks position” and they came to us.
The lines for bread were getting longer. Bread was brought to bakeries less and less often. At first we stood on the street and waited for delivery. Then they waited their turn. This took several hours. And in December there were days when nothing was brought to the bakeries. They still stood.
The bread was sticky, almost black. One day it turned out that it was impossible to eat it: it was bitter, like wormwood. The experienced grandmother Elena Gavrilovna examined it carefully and made a diagnosis: the black lumps were mouse droppings.
With our six bread cards we received about one kilogram a day. We always tried to get a day ahead, preferably two. But they didn’t give me two days.
The line was moving very slowly. During the smokehouse, the saleswoman, with frozen hands in gloves with cut off fingers, had to cut coupons from each card, stick them on sheets of paper by category (workers, employees, dependents, children), receive money and weigh the bread. He had to be hidden in a bag or briefcase (not in a net) as soon as possible, and only after that he had to get out of the queue, holding him close to him. There was usually a crowd of people around the counter. The bread could have been taken away. It was also dangerous on the street; even here he could be snatched out of his hands. Craftsmen were especially dangerous - teenage boys from vocational schools, with hungry eyes and blackened faces. And they were dressed all in black.
A kilogram of bread had to be divided among 6 people and 3 times a day, i.e. for 18 pieces. In addition to bread, a large pot of cereal soup was cooked daily. They added what they had to it: dried vegetables or some canned food received on ration cards.
Products, except bread, were obtained from one of the nearest stores to which they were assigned. Most often at the "vodnikov" - that was the name of the store on the corner of Gorokhovaya and Herzen, in house No. 28. There was also an "ORS" store - the labor supply department of the factory named after. Volodarsky on Gorokhovaya, but only those working at the factory and sometimes some lucky people were assigned there. But on the corner of Nevsky and Gogol Street (Malaya Morskaya) the store was called “general’s”. They entered there only with passes. Very formidable law enforcement officers in white sheepskin coats stood at the door. There were rumors that everything was there.
One cup of cereal was measured per day for soup and 2 cups for porridge. Porridge - either in the morning or in the evening. Of course, on the water. Of course, without oil. Only occasionally one teaspoon of sunflower.
The cards were used to receive briquettes of porridge, some kind of coffee briquettes the size of toffee, which were intended to be diluted with water, but were eaten like candy. You could also use sugar coupons to get gingerbread or cookies, which were bought for Petya. For meat coupons - most often canned fish - something in a tomato. Later, American stew, egg powder, and chopped chocolate appeared, but the norms were minimal, and the entire ten-day norm was eaten in 2-3 days. This was in 1942, and in December 1941 there was a peak of hunger, cold, and mortal danger.
