Sunshine Recorder

Between September 1941 and January 1944, Leningrad was besieged by Nazi Germany, during which time three-quarters of a million inhabitants starved to death. The Nazis “prosecuted a classical siege, preventing, so far as possible, all movement of people and goods in and out of the city, using air and ground bombardment to destroy food stocks, utilities, factories, hospitals, schools and housing,” writes Anna Reid in “Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944” (Walker and Company), the first full-scale narrative of the event in more than four decades.

“The siege of Leningrad has been paid rather little attention in the West … despite the fact that Leningrad was the first city in all Europe that Hitler failed to take,” offers the author in the book’s introduction. Part of the reason is that the Soviets actively obscured the truth, while military historians have long preferred to focus on the battles for Stalingrad and Moscow. Reid’s history addresses everything from the Nazis’ deliberate decision to starve Leningrad, to the incompetence and cruelty of Soviet leadership, to the terrible details of life in the blocked city.

Perhaps most notably, Reid contends that the death toll would have been far lower under a different sort of government, one better prepared and more responsive to the challenges faced by the city’s citizens. “Failing to empty Leningrad of its surplus population before the siege ring closed was one of the Soviet regime’s worst blunders of the war, leading to more civilian deaths than any other save the failure to anticipate Barbarossa itself,” writes Reid, who graciously took the time to answer Failure’s questions about the siege.

Why has the siege of Leningrad received relatively little attention from historians?

In Russia, this isn’t true: the siege has received lots of attention, just attention of the wrong sort. Under Communism, honest history-writing was pretty much impossible on any subject, of course, but especially so on the siege of Leningrad, since the vast civilian death toll begged so many questions about the competence of the wartime leadership. Why was the German invasion such a surprise? Why were the German armies allowed to encircle the city? Why weren’t more food stocks laid in, or surplus civilians evacuated, before the siege ring closed? How fair was the rationing system? What did Leningraders really think of Andrei Zhdanov and the city’s other Party bosses?

Until Gorbachev’s glasnost Russian historians had no hope of addressing these kinds of questions: their job was to polish an uplifting story of heroic national resistance amidst extraordinary suffering. This didn’t require them to make things up—the heroism and the suffering were real—but it did mean leaving a great deal out. Taboos included the shocking waste of the People’s Levy (a 135,000-strong civilian militia thrown into the front line, without weapons or training, from late July 1941), the encirclement and loss of the Second Shock Army in the spring of 1942, the deaths of tens of thousands on the chaotic Ice Road, endemic theft and corruption within the food distribution system, and continuing political repression. (Ordinary, patriotic Leningraders continued to be arrested by the thousands, even as they died of hunger.) Also left out were the inevitable pathologies of all starving societies: murder, mugging and looting, the collapse of families and friendships, and most notoriously, the scavenging of corpse-meat for food. The distortions and exclusions didn’t only serve a political purpose, they also gave genuine psychological comfort to the three generations whose lives were blighted by the war. Even today, siege historians—mostly themselves St. Petersburgers—feel constrained by a deep sense of respect towards the dwindling band of siege survivors. Debate may become franker, ironically, when the last blokadniki have passed away.

On coverage of the siege in the West: until the last fifteen years or so, the whole Eastern Front was hopelessly under-reported. Partly this was because we were more interested in the campaigns—France, Italy, North Africa—in which our own troops fought; partly because Soviet censorship blocked access to Russian primary sources. It’s nevertheless extraordinary that my book is one of only two general histories of the blockade (the other is Michael Jones’s “Leningrad: State of Siege”) to have come out since Harrison Salisbury’s “900 Days” in the 1960s.

Inside the city, which people were most likely to survive? Who was at the bottom of the food hierarchy?

At the top of the food hierarchy, predictably, were staff at the city Party headquarters (a trades union official’s recently released diary lovingly describes the bread and butter, pork and steamed cabbage on offer in the canteen), and people who worked within the food distribution system, within which theft and corruption were widespread. Many diarists complain of bosses skimming their allotted rations, or of “plump” and bejeweled girls behind the counters in the bread shops. Also privileged—though far less so—were factory workers and the staff of prestigious institutions such as the Academy of Sciences and the Hermitage. Their workplaces were less likely to close down, condemning them to a “dependent’s” ration card (nicknamed the smertnik, from the Russian word for “death”). They were also likelier to have some sort of light and heat, and access to food parcels sent by air from Moscow. The poet Olga Berggolts, for example, was able to distribute coffee, chocolate, oranges and other luxuries to friends thanks to her job at the city radio station.

At the bottom of the food hierarchy came the poor and unskilled (in apartment buildings and offices, janitors and cleaning ladies were often the first to die), the peasant refugees who arrived in the suburbs with their carts and cattle ahead of the German armies, and teenage “factory-school boys”—village boys sent to board in the city and train as industrial workers. These latter groups were more or less abandoned by the authorities. (The Party archives are full of examples of food allotted them being skimmed or stolen.) The very earliest reports of starvation deaths come from the suburban towns in which peasant refugees were penned (they were not allowed into the city center), and factory-school boys became notorious for mugging for bread. There are no reliable figures for the death rate amongst either group, but it was certainly well above the average twenty-five or thirty percent. 

To what extent was crime and cannibalism a problem during the siege?

One of the regime’s most remarkable achievements was that while crime—including the looting of bread shops and bread-carts—was widespread during the siege, Leningrad never descended into lawlessness. Survivors’ recollections of the first, mass death siege winter are not of disorder, but of emptiness and quiet. One told me that yes, she had been afraid when walking through the streets alone, but not because she feared crime—in fact, she only learned that there was any long afterwards, by reading about it. At the time she felt “alone in the city, absolutely alone. I would walk to the shop and back, enter our courtyard, climb the stairs and go in my door. If anyone had wanted to they could have pushed me over with their little finger. But I never met a soul.”

The most notorious crime of the siege was cannibalism, but it was not widespread. A total of 2,015 people were arrested for “the use of human meat for food” between December ’41, when the first cases were reported, and the end of 1942, when they finally petered out. Even taking into account under-reporting (rank and file police were starving too) this represents less than a thousandth of a pre-siege population of 2.5 million. And the vast majority of “cannibals” were not the bestial lowlifes of Soviet legend, but the respectable poor. Sixty-four percent, the police reports tell us, were women; over ninety-percent had only a basic education, forty-four percent were jobless, and only two percent had a criminal record. Case reports also often mention—perhaps in an unspoken plea for clemency—that the arrestee was unsupported (her husband being dead or at the front) and had children. “Cannibals,” in other words, were ordinary working-class women, scavenging protein to feed their families.

The Soviet dictator died six decades ago. But Russians have yet to say farewell.

When Joseph Stalin died sixty years ago, Soviet citizens sensed that their lives had changed forever — and they were right. During his nearly 30 year rule, Stalin transformed the USSR from the ground up and led it to victory in World War II. He also killed, imprisoned, or displaced tens of millions of his own compatriots; the full extent of his crimes will probably never be fully known. His successors ruled on an altogether more modest scale.

In October 2012, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace commissioned a survey of perceptions of Stalin in Russia and three South Caucasus states: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The results show with startling clarity that, for many, the Soviet tyrant lives on. Of the four post-communist states surveyed, only Azerbaijan (which seems to be more interested these days in emulating Dubai than dwelling on its Soviet past) appears to have set Stalin on a path toward irrelevance: 22 percent said they had no idea who he was. (Among the young this number reached almost forty percent.) In Georgia, by contrast, a shocking 45 percent of the respondents shared a positive view of Stalin — presumably because he remains, as the most famous (and infamous) ethnic Georgian, a powerful nationalist symbol. In Armenia this number was 25 percent, in Azerbaijan it was 21.

Yet Russia is the place where, in many ways, the legacy of Stalinism runs deepest. In the Carnegie survey, conducted Moscow’s respected Levada Center, 42 percent of Russians named Stalin the public figure that has had the most influence on world history — up from just 12 percent back in 1989, at the peak of Gorbachev’s liberalization push. Meanwhile, the number of those who express a positive opinion of Stalin in the Carnegie survey reached 28 percent. To quote the Levada Center’s Gudkov, these figures represent “an astonishing resurgence of Stalin’s popularity in Russia” since the end of the USSR.

There is, however, something curious about this recognition: Traveling around Russia, one would never guess the Russian people believe Stalin is their greatest compatriot. Stalin statues or portraits are nowhere to be found, and there are no streets or cities named after him. For comparison the embalmed body of Lenin, Stalin’s Bolshevik predecessor, is still on display in the mausoleum in Red Square. Lenin’s name and monuments adorn every Russian city. Yet Lenin is slowly slipping into oblivion: During the same period of 1989 to 2012 his popularity dropped from 72 to 37 percent. 

Stalin is a hidden hero, and this status is part of the inherently vague nature of Russia’s post-communist statehood and national identity. Russia does not have a nationally recognized narrative of the origins of the new, post-Soviet Russian state and no consensual perception of its Communist past.

Russian Stalinist groups, Communists, war veterans and others have repeatedly come up with initiatives of paying tribute to Stalin, such as bringing back the name of Stalingrad to the Russian city (now known as Volgograd) where one of the major battles of WWII was fought. Most recently, a Duma deputy has talked about naming a street in Moscow Stalingradskaya (after the battle of Stalingrad). Neither of the two ideas has been fully implemented, but Stalinists can claim some successes in endowing their hero with physical presence. Buses adorned with Stalin’s image have appeared in some Russian cities on Victory Day and other wartime anniversaries.

In Russia the official discourse on Stalin is evasive, and public perception of him is ambivalent and divisive. Almost half of Russians surveyed agree with the statement that “Stalin was a wise leader who brought power and prosperity to the Soviet Union.” But over half in the same poll believe that Stalin’s acts of repression constituted “a political crime that cannot be justified.” And about two-thirds agree that “for all Stalin’s mistakes and misdeeds, the most important thing is that under his leadership the Soviet people won the Great Patriotic War” (the name Russians give to World War II).

During the six decades since Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union and then post-communist Russia have gone through two and a half phases of de-Stalinization — but though his images are absent from the Russian physical space, Stalin’s  presence can be easily felt in the Russian political order and in state-society relations.

What really happened to Russia’s missing cosmonauts? An incredible tale of space hacking, espionage and death in the lonely reaches of space.

Midnight, 19 May 1961. A crisp frost had descended on Turin’s city centre which was deserted and deathly silent. Well, almost. Two brothers, aged 20 and 23, raced through the grid-like streets (that would later be made famous by the film The Italian Job) in a tiny Fiat 600, which screamed in protest as they bounced across one cobbled piazza after another at top speed. 

The Fiat was loaded with dozens of iron pipes and aluminium sheets which poked out of windows and were strapped to the roof. The car screeched to a halt outside the city’s tallest block of flats. Grabbing their assorted pipes, along with a large toolbox, the two brothers ran up the stairs to the rooftop. Moments later, the city’s silence was rudely broken once more as they set to work: a concerto of hammering, clattering, sawing and shouting. 

Suddenly, an angry voice rang out; the man who lived on the floor below leant out of the window and screamed: “Will you stop that racket, I’m trying to sleep!” 

One of the young men shouted back “Sorry sir; the Soviets have launched a satellite and we’re trying to intercept it!” 

The brothers finished setting up, grabbed their head-sets, twiddled the knobs on their portable receivers, hit the record button and listened… 

“Come in… come in… come in… Listen! Come in! Talk to me! I am hot! I am hot! Come in! What? Forty-five? What? Fifty? Yes. Yes, yes, breathing. Oxygen, oxygen… I am hot. This… isn’t this dangerous?” 
The brothers looked nervously at one another. They only fully understood the Russian later when their sister translated for them, but the desperation in the woman’s voice was clear. 

“Transmission begins now. Forty-one. Yes, I feel hot. I feel hot, it’s all… it’s all hot. I can see a flame! I can see a flame! I can see a flame! Thirty-two… thirty-two. Am I going to crash? Yes, yes I feel hot… I am listening, I feel hot, I will re-enter. I’m hot!” 

The signal went dead. 

There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at –270 degrees C (–454ºF); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the original lost cosmonaut, whose rocket went up and, instead of coming back down, just kept on going. 

It is the ultimate in Cold War legends: that at the dawn of the Space Age, in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, the Soviet Union had two space programmes, one a public programme, the other a ‘black’ one, in which far more daring and sometimes downright suicidal missions were attempted. It was assumed that Russia’s Black Ops, if they existed at all, would remain secret forever. 

The ‘Lost Cosmonauts’ debate has been reawakened thanks to a new investigation into the efforts of two ingenious, radio-mad young Italian brothers who, starting in 1957, hacked into both Russia’s and NASA’s space programmes – so effect­ively that the Russians, it seems, may have wanted them dead. 

Newly-declassified documents show the FBI kept close tabs on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s only daughter after her high-profile defection to the United States in 1967, gathering details from informants about how her arrival was affecting international relations.

The documents were released Monday to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act following Lana Peters’ death last year at age 85 in a Wisconsin nursing home. Her defection to the West during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author. And her move was a public relations coup for the U.S.

One April 28, 1967, memo details a conversation with a confidential source who said the defection would have a “profound effect” for anyone else thinking of trying to leave the Soviet Union. The source claimed to have discussed the defection with a Czechoslovak journalist covering the United Nations and a member of the Czechoslovakia “Mission staff.”

“Our source opined that the United States Government exhibited a high degree of maturity, dignity and understanding during this period,” according to the memo, prominently marked “SECRET” at the top and bottom. “It cannot help but have a profound effect upon anyone who is considering a similar solution to an unsatisfactory life in a Soviet bloc country.”

When she defected, Peters was known as Svetlana Alliluyeva, but she went by Lana Peters following her 1970 marriage to William Wesley Peters, an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright. Peters said her defection was partly motivated by the Soviet authorities’ poor treatment of her late husband, Brijesh Singh, a prominent figure in the Indian Communist Party.

Another memo dated June 2, 1967, describes a conversation an unnamed FBI source had with Mikhail Trepykhalin, identified as the second secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The source said Trepykhalin told him the Soviets were “very unhappy over her defection” and asked whether the U.S. would use it “for propaganda purposes.” Trepykhalin “was afraid forces in the U.S. would use her to destroy relationships between the USSR and this country,” the source told the FBI.

An unnamed informant in another secret memo from that month said Soviet authorities were not disturbed by the defection because it would “further discredit Stalin’s name and family.”

Stalin, a dictator held responsible for sending millions of his countrymen to their deaths in labor camps, led the Soviet Union from 1941 until his death in 1953. Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced him three years later as a brutal despot.

And even though Peters denounced communism and her father’s policies, Stalin’s legacy haunted her in the United States.

“People say, ‘Stalin’s daughter, Stalin’s daughter,’ meaning I’m supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans,” she said in a 2007 interview for a documentary about her life. “Or they say, ‘No, she came here. She is an American citizen.’ That means I’m with a bomb against the others. No, I’m neither one. I’m somewhere in between.”

How Soviet-era Moscow University used deceptively simple math exams to keep out Jewish students. 

… In the Soviet Union circa 1984—remember Orwell?—it was not considered bizarre to ask someone what their “nationality” was. In the inner passport which every Soviet citizen had to carry with them, there was in fact a special line for “nationality,” and for this reason it was called pyataya grafa, “the fifth line.” It came after (1) first name, (2) patronymic name, (3) last name, and (4) the date of birth. Nationality was also recorded in one’s birth certificate, as were the nationalities of the parents. If their nationalities were different, as in my case, then the parents had a choice which nationality to give to their child.

For all intents and purposes, “the fifth line” was a code for asking whether one was Jewish or not. (People of other nationalities, like Tatars and Armenians, against whom there were prejudices and persecution—though not nearly on the same scale as against the Jews—were also picked up this way.) My “fifth line” said that I was Russian, but my last name—which was my father’s last name, and clearly sounded Jewish—gave me away.

Even if I hadn’t been using my father’s last name, my Jewish origin would have been picked up by the admissions committee anyway, because the application form specifically asked for the full names of both parents. Those full names included patronymic names, that is, the first names of the grandparents of the applicant. My father’s patronymic name was Joseph, clearly Jewish, so this was another way to find out (if his last name weren’t so obviously Jewish). The system was set up in such a way that it would pick up those who were at least one-quarter Jewish and everyone of those was classified as a Jew, much like it was in Nazi Germany.

Having established that by this definition I was a Jew, the woman said:

“Do you know that Jews are not accepted to Moscow University?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that you shouldn’t even bother to apply. Don’t waste your time. They won’t let you in.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Is that why you sent me this letter?”

“Yes. I’m just trying to help you.”

I looked around. It was clear that everyone in the office was aware of what this conversation was about, even if they weren’t listening closely. This must have already happened dozens of times, and everybody seemed used to it. They all averted their eyes, as if I were a terminally ill patient. My heart sank.

I had encountered anti-Semitism before, but at a personal, not institutional level. When I was in fifth grade, some of my classmates took to taunting me evrey, evrey (“Jew, Jew”). I don’t think they had any idea what this meant (which was clear from the fact that some of them confused the word evrey, which meant “Jew,” with evropeyets, which meant “European”)—they must have heard anti-Semitic remarks from their parents or other adults. (Unfortunately, anti-Semitism was deeply rooted in the Russian culture.) I was strong enough and lucky to have a couple of true friends who stood by me, so I was never actually beaten up, but this was a very unpleasant experience. I was too proud to tell the teachers or my parents, but one day a teacher was passing by. He intervened, and as the result, those kids were immediately called to the principal, and the taunting stopped.

It is important to note that my family was not religious at all. My father was not brought up in a religious tradition, and neither was I. Religion in the Soviet Union was in fact all but non-existent in those days. Most Christian Orthodox churches were destroyed or closed. In the few existing churches one could typically only find a few old babushkas, like my maternal grandmother. She occasionally attended service at the only active church in my hometown, Kolomna. There were even fewer synagogues. There were none in my home town; in Moscow, whose population was close to ten million, there was only one. Going to a service in a church or a synagogue was dangerous: one could be spotted by special plain-clothed agents and get in a lot of trouble. So when someone was referred to as being Jewish, it was meant not in the sense of religion, but in the sense of ethnicity, “blood.”

My parents had heard of the discrimination against Jews at entrance exams to universities, but somehow they did not pay much attention to this. In my hometown, there weren’t many Jews to begin with, and all of the purported discrimination cases my parents had heard of concerned programs in physics. A typical argument went that Jews weren’t accepted there because the studies in such a program were related to nuclear research and hence to the defense and state secrets; the government didn’t want Jews to be in those areas because Jews could emigrate to Israel or somewhere else. By this logic, why would anyone care about pure math? Well, apparently, someone did.