What a horror.... What a horror...
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1764991.html
Minister of Culture Medinsky is confident that in besieged Leningrad, Smolny also starved
Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky, speaking on the radio station “Echo of Moscow,” called Daniil Granin’s publications about baking during the blockade of rum women for Smolny “a lie.”
At one time, at the “headquarters of the revolution,” the leadership of Leningrad, represented by Zhdanov, Popkov, and Kuznetsov, discussed the film “Defense of Leningrad.” It showed a line of dead people. Popkov summarizes: “The impression is depressing. Some of the episodes about the coffins will have to be removed.”
The same Popkov, after the war, at a press conference for foreign journalists, when one of the British asked about the losses in the city - was it true that there were up to five hundred thousand people - “without hesitation, he answered: This figure is many times overestimated and is a complete newspaper canard..." A minute later, when asked about the supply of public services to the population during the blockade, he replied: The supply of electricity and the operation of the water supply in Leningrad did not stop for an hour."
REGNUM news agency provides these quotes from the books of historian Sergei Yarov “Siege Ethics. Ideas about Morality in Leningrad in 1941-1942” and historian, researcher at the Hermitage and the Pushkin House Vladislav Glinka “Siege”.
And here is a quote from the book of the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky “War: Myths of the USSR”: “Facts in themselves do not mean very much. I will say even more bluntly: in the matter of historical mythology they mean nothing at all. Everything begins not with facts, but with interpretations. If you love your homeland, your people, then the history you write will always be positive."
The story of the rum women was publicly voiced by Granin back in 2013 - at the presentation at the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg of the uncensored edition of the Siege Book, and photographs from 1941 were also shown at the same time. But journalists were asked not to publish them for now - so that this material could be included in the book.
He also ended up in Granin’s “The Man Is Not From Here.” Here's a snippet:
"...Once, after the publication of the Siege Book, they brought me photographs of a confectionery shop in 1941. They assured me that this was the very end, December, famine was already in full swing in Leningrad. The photographs were clear, professional, they shocked me. I told them I didn’t believe it, it seemed that I had already seen so much, heard enough, learned so much about life under the siege, learned more than I did back then during the war, being in St. Petersburg. My soul was already hardened. And here there are no horrors, just pastry chefs in white caps fussing over a large baking sheet , I don’t know what they call it there. The whole baking tray is filled with rum women. The photograph is irrefutably authentic. But I didn’t believe it. Maybe this is not 1941 and not the time of the siege?... They assured me that the photograph was from that time. Proof: a photograph of the same workshop, the same bakers, published in a newspaper in 1942, only there was a caption that there was bread on the baking sheets. Therefore, the photographs ended up in print. But these rum ones did not and could not get in, since photographers did not have the ability to photograph such production you’re right, it’s the same as giving away a military secret for such a photo directly to SMERSH, every photographer understood this. There was one more piece of evidence. The photographs were published in Germany in 1992.
The signature in our archive is as follows: “The best shift foreman of the “Ensk” confectionery factory V.A. Abakumov, the head of a team that regularly exceeds the norm. In the photo: V.A. Abakumov checks the baking of “Viennese cakes.” 12/12/1941. Leningrad. Photo by A.A. Mikhailov. TASS."
Yuri Lebedev, studying the history of the Leningrad blockade, first discovered these photos not in our literature, but in the German book “Blokade Leningrad 1941-1944” (Rovolt publishing house, 1992). At first he perceived this as a falsification by bourgeois historians, then he established that the St. Petersburg archive of the TsGAKFFD contains the originals of these photographs. And even later we established that this photographer, A.A. Mikhailov, died in 1943.
And then one of the stories that Adamovich and I listened to surfaced in my memory: some TASS employee was sent to a confectionery factory where they make sweets and cakes for the bosses. He got there on assignment. Take photos of the products. The fact is that occasionally, instead of sugar, blockade survivors were given sweets on cards. In the workshop he saw pastries, cakes and other delights. She should have been photographed. For what? To whom? Yuri Lebedev could not establish. He suggested that the authorities wanted to show newspaper readers that “the situation in Leningrad is not so terrible.”
The order is quite cynical. But our propaganda had no moral prohibitions. It was December 1941, the most terrible month of the siege. The caption under the photo reads: “12/12/1941. Production of “rum women” at the 2nd confectionery factory. A. Mikhailov. TASS.”
On my advice, Yu. Lebedev researched this story in detail. She turned out to be even more monstrous than we expected. The factory produced Viennese cakes and chocolate throughout the blockade. Delivered to Smolny. There were no deaths from hunger among factory workers. We ate in the workshops. It was forbidden to take it out under pain of execution. 700 workers prospered. I don’t know how much I enjoyed it in Smolny, in the Military Council...
Relatively recently, the diary of one of the party leaders of that time became known. He happily wrote down what was given for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. No worse than to this day in the same Smolny. Generally speaking, the photo archives of the blockade look poor, I went through them. There was no Smolny canteen, no bunkers, no well-fed bosses there. During the war, propaganda convinced us that the leaders suffered the same hardships as the townspeople, that the party and the people were united. Honestly, this continues to this day, the party is different, but still united."
Daniil Granin writes here about the diaries of the instructor of the personnel department of the district committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Belarus Nikolai Ribkovsky. In February last year, after the presentation in St. Petersburg of the first uncensored edition of the Siege Book, REGNUM cited these diaries in its publication.
Let us remind you: an entry dated December 9, 1941 from the diary of Nikolai Ribkovsky, an instructor in the personnel department of the city committee of the All-Russian Communist Party of Belarus: “Now I don’t feel any particular need for food. In the morning, breakfast is pasta or noodles, or porridge with butter and two glasses of sweet tea. In the afternoon, lunch is the first cabbage soup or soup, a second meat every day. Yesterday, for example, I ate green cabbage soup with sour cream for the first course, a cutlet with noodles for the second, and today for the first course soup with noodles, and for the second course pork with stewed cabbage."
And here is the entry in his diary dated March 5, 1942: “For three days now I have been in the hospital of the city party committee. In my opinion, this is simply a seven-day rest home and it is located in one of the pavilions of the now closed rest home of the party activists of the Leningrad organization in the Mill Stream... Your cheeks are burning from the evening frost... And from the frost, somewhat tired, with a tipple in your head from the forest aroma, you stumble into a house with warm, cozy rooms, sink into a soft chair, blissfully stretch your legs... The food here is like in peacetime in a good holiday home. Every day there is meat - lamb, ham, chicken, goose, turkey, sausage, fish - bream, herring, smelt, fried, boiled, and jellied. Caviar, balyk, cheese, pies, cocoa, coffee, tea, three hundred grams of white and the same amount of black bread per day, thirty grams of butter and to all this fifty grams of grape wine, good port wine for lunch and dinner... Yes. Such a rest, in front conditions , a long blockade of the city, is possible only with the Bolsheviks, only under Soviet power... What is even better? We eat, drink, walk, sleep, or just sit back and listen to the gramophone, exchanging jokes, playing dominoes or playing cards. And in total I paid only 50 rubles for the vouchers!”
Let us also recall that in the encyclopedia compiled by the St. Petersburg historian Igor Bogdanov based on the study of archival documents, “The Leningrad Siege from A to Z” in the chapter “Special Supply” we read: “In the archival documents there is not a single fact of starvation among representatives of the district committees, city committees, regional committees VKPb. On December 17, 1941, the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council allowed the Leningrad Restaurant to serve dinner without food cards to the secretaries of the district committees of the Communist Party, the chairmen of the executive committees of the district councils, their deputies and the secretaries of the executive committees of the district councils."
This is what Russian historian Sergei Yarov writes in his study “Siege Ethics. The Idea of Morality in Leningrad in 1941-1942”: “If the directors of factories and factories had the right to a “cardless” lunch, then the leaders of party, Komsomol, Soviet and trade union organizations they also received a "cardless" dinner. In Smolny, only bread coupons were torn from the entire "cards" of diners. When receiving a meat dish, only 50% of meat coupons were torn off, and cereal and pasta dishes were sold without "cards" . Accurate data on food consumption in the Smolny canteen is still not available and this says a lot(emphasis added by us - REGNUM news agency).
Among the meager stories about food in Smolny, where rumors are mixed with real events, there are some that can be treated with some confidence.
In the spring of 1942, O. Grechina’s brother brought two liter jars (“one contained cabbage, once sour, but now completely rotten, and the other contained the same rotten red tomatoes”), explaining that they were cleaning the cellars of Smolny, taking barrels out of there with rotten vegetables. One of the cleaners was lucky enough to look at the banquet hall in Smolny itself - she was invited there “for service.” They envied her, but she returned from there in tears - no one fed her, “and there was so much that was not on the tables.”
Rambler-News
I. Metter told how a member of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front A.A. Kuznetsov, as a sign of his favor, handed over to the actress of the Baltic Fleet Theater “a chocolate cake specially baked at the Samoilova confectionery factory”; Fifteen people ate it and, in particular, I. Metter himself. There was no shameful intent here, it was just that A.A. Kuznetsov was sure that in a city littered with the corpses of those killed from exhaustion, he also had the right to make generous gifts at someone else’s expense to those he liked. These people behaved as if peaceful life continued, and they could, without hesitation, relax in the theater, send cakes to artists and force librarians to look for books for their “minutes of relaxation.”
Galina Artemenko
Continuation of the nightmare - about the Eliseevsky store
The Siege of Leningrad was a military blockade by German, Finnish and Spanish troops involving volunteers from North Africa, Europe and the Italian Navy during the Great Patriotic War of the city of Leningrad. The blockade lasted from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944 - 872 days .
In 1941, the city did not have sufficient supplies of food and fuel. The only route of communication with Leningrad remained Lake Ladoga, which was within the reach of enemy artillery and aviation; a joint naval group also operated on the lake. The capacity of this transport artery did not meet the needs of the city. As a result, mass famine began in Leningrad, aggravated by the particularly harsh first winter of the siege, problems with heating and transport, which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths among civilians.
At the time of the blockade, 2 million 544 thousand civilians lived in the city, including about 400 thousand children; 343 thousand people remained in the suburban areas (in the blockade ring). In September, when systematic bombing, shelling and fires began, many thousands of families wanted to leave, but the routes were cut off. Mass evacuation of citizens began only in January 1942 along the ice road.
Rations for blockade survivors
Bread cards
On the collective and state farms of the blockade ring, everything that could be used for food was collected from fields and gardens. However, all these measures could not save people from hunger. On November 20 - for the fifth time the population and the third time the troops - the norms for the distribution of bread had to be reduced. Warriors on the front line began to receive 500 grams per day, workers - 250 grams, employees, dependents and soldiers not on the front line - 125 grams. Apart from bread, they received almost nothing. Famine began in besieged Leningrad.
Based on the actual consumption, the availability of basic food products as of September 12, 1941 was:
- Bread grain and flour for 35 days
- Cereals and pasta for 30 days
- Meat and meat products for 33 days
- Fats for 45 days
- Sugar and confectionery for 60 days
Nutrition standards among the troops defending the city were reduced several times. From October 2, the daily bread norm per person in front line units was reduced to 800 grams, for other military and paramilitary units to 600 g. On November 7, the norm was reduced to 600 and 400 g, respectively, and on November 20 to 500 and 300 grams, respectively. The norms for other food products from the daily allowance were also cut. For the civilian population, the norms for the supply of goods on food cards, introduced in the city back in July, also decreased due to the blockade of the city, and turned out to be minimal from November 20 to December 25, 1941. The food ration size was:
- Workers - 250 grams of bread per day,
- Employees, dependents and children under 12 years old - 125 grams each,
- Personnel of the paramilitary guards, fire brigades, fighter squads, vocational schools and FZO schools who were on boiler allowance - 300 grams.
Moreover, up to half of the bread consisted of practically inedible impurities added instead of flour. All other products almost ceased to be issued, beer production ceased on September 23, and all stocks of malt, barley, soybeans and bran were transferred to bakeries in order to reduce flour consumption. As of September 24, 40% of bread consisted of malt, oats and husks, and later cellulose. On December 25, 1941, the standards for issuing bread were increased - the population of Leningrad began to receive 350 g of bread on a work card and 200 g on an employee, child and dependent card; the troops began to issue 600 g of bread per day for field rations, and 400 g for rear rations. From February 10, the norm at the front line increased to 800 g, in other parts - to 600. From February 11, new supply standards for the civilian population were introduced: 500 grams of bread for workers, 400 for employees, 300 for children and non-workers. The impurities have almost disappeared from the bread. But the main thing is that supplies have become regular, food rationing has begun to be issued on time and almost completely. On February 16, quality meat was even issued for the first time - frozen beef and lamb. There has been a turning point in the food situation in the city.
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575g |
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Hospitals and canteens with enhanced nutrition
Bread from the times of the siege. Museum of Siege Leningrad
By decision of the bureau of the city committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Leningrad City Executive Committee, additional medical nutrition was organized at increased standards in special hospitals created at plants and factories, as well as one hundred and five city canteens. The hospitals operated from January 1 to May 1, 1942 and served up to 60 thousand people. From the end of April 1942, by decision of the Leningrad City Executive Committee, the network of canteens for enhanced nutrition was expanded. Sixty-four canteens were set up outside businesses. Food in these canteens was provided according to specially approved standards. From April 25 to July 1, 1942, 234 thousand people used them, of which 69% were workers, 18.5% were employees and 12.5% were dependents.
In January 1942, a hospital for scientists and creative workers began operating at the Astoria Hotel. In the dining room of the House of Scientists, from 200 to 300 people ate during the winter months. On December 26, 1941, the Leningrad City Executive Committee ordered the Gastronom office to organize a one-time sale with home delivery at state prices without food cards to academicians and corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences: animal butter - 0.5 kg, wheat flour - 3 kg, canned meat or fish - 2 boxes, sugar 0.5 kg, eggs - 3 dozen, chocolate - 0.3 kg, cookies - 0.5 kg, and grape wine - 2 bottles.
By decision of the city executive committee, new orphanages were opened in the city in January 1942. In five months, eighty-five orphanages were organized in Leningrad, accepting 30 thousand children left without parents. The command of the Leningrad Front and the city leadership sought to provide orphanages with the necessary food. The resolution of the Front Military Council dated February 7, 1942 approved the following monthly supply standards for orphanages per child: meat - 1.5 kg, fats - 1 kg, eggs - 15 pieces, sugar - 1.5 kg, tea - 10 g, coffee - 30 g , cereals and pasta - 2.2 kg, wheat bread - 9 kg, wheat flour - 0.5 kg, dried fruits - 0.2 kg, potato flour -0.15 kg.
Universities open their own hospitals, where scientists and other university employees could rest for 7-14 days and receive enhanced nutrition, which consisted of 20 g of coffee, 60 g of fat, 40 g of sugar or confectionery, 100 g of meat, 200 g of cereal , 0.5 eggs, 350 g of bread, 50 g of wine per day, and the products were issued by cutting coupons from food cards.
Additional supplies were organized for the leadership of the city and region. According to surviving evidence, the leadership of Leningrad did not experience difficulties in feeding and heating living quarters. The diaries of party workers of that time preserved the following facts: any food was available in the Smolny canteen: fruits, vegetables, caviar, buns, cakes. Milk and eggs were delivered from a subsidiary farm in the Vsevolozhsk region. In a special rest house, high-quality food and entertainment were available to vacationing representatives of the nomenklatura.
Ladoga-style pancakes
They eat potatoes caught from barges sunk by the Germans on Lake Ladoga, which were intended for Leningraders. Potatoes are distributed to institutions in the amount of 100 grams per person and not at the expense of cards. The potatoes are black-brown in color; if possible, they are ground into a uniform mass and cakes are baked in a hot frying pan or just iron. It is recommended to eat without chewing, so as not to break your teeth on sand and small pebbles.
Herring pate
Herring heads, tail and fins left over from rations (one should not neglect those found in garbage) are washed well and passed through a meat grinder at least 5-6 times. The last time before grinding you can add a small piece of bread and the pate is ready!
There was no fresh fish; the small catch caught in the port was used for the needs of the port workers, and some of it ended up on the table of the “responsible workers.” As a rule, the population was given herring, and also rarely. Fish oil was considered a great delicacy. They usually saved it for children, and they found in it not only calorie content, but also excellent taste. “Several times we allowed ourselves the luxury of frying our bread in fish oil,” we read in the memoirs of A.I. Voivodeship
Jellied
A tile (100 grams) of wood glue is soaked in cold water. After a few hours, when the glue has swelled, add water up to five times the size and boil over low heat. Add salt to taste and to add a rotten smell you can add pepper, bay leaf, etc. After boiling for half an hour, the liquid is poured into a flat bowl and placed in a cool place. After 3-4 hours the aspic is ready. If you have vinegar, pour it on it, but it’s still delicious.
“A wonderful dish,” noted A.T. in his diary. Kedrov, and another siege survivor, schoolgirl E. Mukhina, writes about him almost in a state of euphoria: “I really liked him. I personally really like it. And when we added a little vinegar, it was wonderful. The taste of meat jelly makes it seem like a piece of meat is about to fall into your mouth. And it doesn’t smell like wood glue at all.” Others, however, noticed the smell of a shoemaker’s or carpenter’s workshop, but it “did not interfere with the pleasure” with which they ate this “tea-brown, appetizingly stimulating jelly.”
As soon as industrial raw materials for food consumption began to be distributed at enterprises, people literally pounced on all these technical fats and glues, asked for more, and rejoiced when they received them. The list of such surrogates turned out to be endless: carpentry and wallpaper glue, lard and Vaseline for launching ships from slipways, drying oil, alcohol for wiping glass, molasses for casting shells, cellulose, bone meal from button production waste (intended for annealing metals), rawhide belts, soles, shoe leather, casein used for the manufacture of paints, plastics and adhesives, shoe polish.
The distribution of “meal substitutes” in factories and factories was banned in June 1942.
Potato casserole
Wash the potato peels (sometimes you can buy them in the market), put them in a saucepan, add a third of the water, cook until soft, then crush them thoroughly; if you have salt, add salt. Bake the resulting mass in a hot frying pan. For potato soup, add triple the amount of water to the crushed mass. Afterwards it is better to boil again if there is enough fuel.
Vegetables were not available to everyone. More than one blockade survivor spoke about trips in the fall of 1941 to front-line fields to search for cabbage stalks and top rotten leaves of cabbage. Let us note that the procurement of vegetables (mainly potatoes and cabbage) in suburban areas in September 1941 was organized extremely poorly. This can be partly explained by the chaos that reigned during the rapid advance of German troops on Leningrad: the fate of the city hung in the balance, and no one could say what would happen the next day. The main problem was the export of vegetables. In some areas, only two or three vehicles per day were allocated for these purposes.
Few people wanted to work in the fields, labor productivity was low, and the living conditions of the mobilized townspeople (each of the rural areas should be helped in cleaning by residents of the urban areas “attached” to them) left much to be desired. Vegetables that were not exported were stolen or, at best, transferred to nearby military units. Of the 10 tons of potato harvest collected at the Plowman collective farm (Slutsk region) and not exported, 6 tons were stolen in three days.
In some cases, vegetable procurement was more organized and orderly. Thus, due to the shortage of workers in the potato fields, state farms involved the townspeople in the harvesting, and they were allowed to take part of the harvest for themselves. But this was rather an exception. Potatoes remained inaccessible to Leningraders even after the end of the “mortal time”. In the summer of 1942, when Leningrad literally “sprouted” with vegetable gardens, almost no potatoes were sown - it seems that there were few tubers left in the starving city.
During the first winter of the blockade, onions were generally worth their weight in gold. It not only saved from vitamin deficiency, but was also a means that could soften the extremely unpleasant taste of food substitutes.
Leather Belt Stew
It is better to take unpainted belts. Fill them with water in the evening (first cut the belts into small pieces and rinse) and boil in the same water, preferably for at least 2-3 hours, if you have fuel. After boiling, season with nettle, quinoa, rosemary, chickweed or other herbs. It's good to add a little vinegar. In winter, season with dry grass or any cereal.
Sometimes (this was noted, however, rarely) they ate candles and flowers of indoor plants, sawdust - they made cakes and pancakes from them. They were especially careful when making jelly from shoe leather. It had to be thoroughly soaked and the water drained several times - otherwise you could get poisoned. True, hungry people who ate leather often did not know about the “culinary” secrets. The main thing was to get enough, they couldn’t stand it.
As A.I. recalled Panteleev, did not disdain “a piece of fried plantar leather”; his little brother and sister, dystrophic patients, who were placed in a boarding house after the death of their mother, also told him: “We were so hungry that we boiled father’s leather gloves and ate them.” They also ate the earth when it seemed nutritious. “We collected soil from the Polytechnic Institute, there was a place where before the war they buried either spoiled food or something else... but the soil there was tasty, fatty, like cottage cheese: it didn’t crunch. We made pancakes out of it,” recalled K.E. Govorova
Mustard flatbreads
Take dry mustard and pour cold water over it, mix thoroughly. When the mustard settles to the bottom, carefully drain the water and add fresh water, repeat 3-4 times to wash out the essential oils from the mustard, which can cause poisoning. Brew the washed mustard with boiling water and bake flat cakes from the swollen mass. You can do it directly in an empty frying pan, and if you have oil (castor, vaseline, drying oil), lightly grease it first. You can add cosmetic almond bran to the mustard mass, grinding them well first. It is recommended to add no more than 10-15% of almond bran, since they are made from bitter almonds and contain hydrocyanic acid. Pure cosmetic bran can cause poisoning, even death. You can also add cakes to the mustard mass: soybean, cotton, flax and others.
Spring salad
Pick young nettles, marjoram, and woodlice. It’s probably better to buy it at the market, because in the city they are immediately picked, and not everyone can get far outside the city. (A small basket of grass costs 100-120 rubles on the market.) Sort the grass thoroughly, rinse thoroughly, and pour vinegar over it. Salad ready. It completely replaces fresh cucumbers, especially if a lot of nettle is added.
Nettle was in great demand, but in Leningrad it was cut off immediately, as soon as it was noticed. It could only be found outside the city. Dandelion roots were also a delicacy (“you cook them and they turn out like potatoes”), as well as sorrel - “before they have time to grow, they tear them up.”
Such “fees” did not immediately find support from the authorities. The fact that the city began to eat grass probably did not characterize their “concern for the workers” from the best side. The retail sale of wild edible herbs was legalized by the decision of the regional and city committees of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks only on July 19, 1942, when, perhaps, every blockade survivor found a use for them, even without instructions from the “top.” The Botanical Institute urgently published a series of brochures with instructions on how and what to prepare from wild and cultivated herbs, but usually the brew was prepared according to one’s own taste and depending on the available products. It is unclear whether the brochure “Tea and Coffee from Cultivated and Wild Plants of the Leningrad Region” was popular, but such publications could probably reduce the number of food poisonings.
Cutlets made from technical albumin (Technical albumin is blood collected from dirty floors during slaughter and preserved with carbolic acid)
Fill technical albumin with cold water, changing it several times after 5-6 hours until the smell of carbolic acid decreases sharply. Add a small amount of water to the washed albumin and place on low heat until a paste forms. Take the mixture with a spoon and bake in a frying pan. For fragrance, it is good to add finely chopped bay leaves and pepper, but the smell does not disappear completely.
Blood sausage made from technical albumin
Sausage is given out at the place of work and does not count towards rations. The sausage with the casing or, having freed it from the casing, is baked in a closed frying pan or oven.
It must be baked well, as it becomes very dirty during cooking. If there is no fragrance, then it is better to eat the sausage cold, then it smells less of disinfectants.
Soybean meal cake
Soybean meal is thoroughly washed. Separately, prepare an adhesive mass for bonding from agar-agar. Agar-agar is a marine plant used to solidify nutrient media on which microbes are grown.
Agar-agar is taken at the rate of 2% to water, it swells greatly, it is boiled for a long time until it dissolves. One part of this mass is added hot to the meal, baked in a mold and cooled.
To another part of the agar-agar, add saccharin or dulcine (an artificial sweet substance) to taste, color it with amaranth, and after baking the cakes, decorate the top with this mixture. The cake cannot be distinguished from the real thing in appearance, but even the hungry were not always tempted by them, since soybean meal was considered the most disgusting. “Ugh, disgusting,” one of the siege survivors will say after trying them, and her words will almost be literally repeated by A.N. Boldyrev:
“I ate it for the first time - it was so disgusting that there are no words, but it was filling, disgusting... I didn’t even finish a little, disgusted.” This meal could be obtained without cards, hence its popularity, which reached its peak by mid-1942. Soybean meal - “raw, wet cakes,” as L.V. Shaporina noted - was also tried in the summer of 1943, several months before the blockade was completely lifted.
Cabbage soup from khryapa
The dish is seasonal. Can only be cooked in autumn. Buy the lower green leaves left after removing the cabbage from the market. You won’t find them in the garden, because the owners remove not only the cabbage, but also the lower green leaf. Chop the cabbage leaf very finely and place it in cold water. Add some salt. It takes a very long time to cook. If there is any grain, then season it. Even when cooked for a long time, cabbage leaves are very hard and crunchy on the teeth, which is why they got the name “khryapa”.
Soups sometimes represented the most unusual combinations of “civilized” and surrogate products. V.F. Chekrizov once seasoned a soup made from cauliflower and carrots with bacon, and cooked cabbage soup from beets and turnips with the addition of buckwheat porridge. This was what “decent” soup looked like (though not always and not for everyone) in the fall of 1941. In the “time of death” it was necessary to use other “products”. Here is the composition of the “soup” cooked in the family of E. Kozlova in December 1941: “Coffee grounds (...used), duranda and 1 teaspoon of oil from aircraft lubrication, and all this in microscopic portions.” The soup at that time was prepared in the simplest way method - from water, soaked bread, potato peelings, millet, pasta; if possible, they also added bay leaves to it. However, “simpler” soups were more often consumed - one of the blockade survivors compared them to water in which they washed greasy dishes. To increase the nutritional value of soups, due to the lack of meat, they put animal skins in them, after scraping them off first.
Meat soup from domestic and domesticated animals
Don't neglect meat. All meat contains proteins that are necessary for humans. According to taste, carried out in one scientific institution at the beginning of the blockade, the meat of some more accessible animals is distributed as follows: meat of a dog, guinea pig, cat, and in last place - rat meat.
Free the carcass from the entrails (it is better not to eat animal heads to avoid psychological effects), rinse thoroughly and put in cold water, add salt. You need to cook for 1-3 hours depending on the size of the animal and the volume of the piece. It’s good to add bay leaves, pepper, some herbs, and if you have cereals, for flavoring.
Eating the meat of dogs and cats became common during the “time of death.” Dogs disappeared the fastest - there were not so many of them and they could not, like people, starve for a long time. In the diary of Sun. Ivanov gives the following story from the artist Vlasov: “The owners, at first, did not eat the dogs themselves, but gave their corpses to friends, and later they began to eat them.” Usually their meat was salted and it lasted for several months. “They say it’s very tasty,” A.N. noted in his diary on December 10, 1941. Boldyrev, seeing a “live dog” on November 28, 1942, wrote in his diary: “This is amazing.”
Most often they ate cats. They began to eat their meat at the beginning of October 1941, although malnutrition was not yet felt as severely as later. Hungry cats running up to people were easy to catch. In the second half of November 1941, cats disappeared from the streets of Leningrad, and their skins began to be found in garbage dumps. In November, a cat cost 40-60 rubles, and in December - 125 rubles. D.N. Lazarev in January 1942 once read the following announcement attached to a pole: “I will give a gold watch for a cat.”
Koshatina has become a delicacy since January 1942. When asking someone for a cat, they often referred to hungry children - apparently, the value of the gift was such that a most compelling argument was required. At first, people who ate cat meat even felt nauseous, but then they got used to it. “Fine white meat” - this is how it was rated in December 1941. And they didn’t hesitate to feast on it later, when the ration standards were significantly increased. “Once again I heard dreams about cat meat as the highest delicacy. She is better than the dog, although the dog is also very good. In particular, soup made from dog intestines is good” - this entry was recorded in A.N.’s diary. Boldyrev on August 17, 1942.
Some blockade survivors also ate rats. Intelligent people were not deterred either. One of the diaries tells of an actress who collected rats crushed by cars from food warehouses.
Dandelion root coffee
In spring, dandelion leaves can be used for salad or simply eaten; a slight bitterness does not interfere. At the end of summer (remember where you grew up), dig up the roots, wash them thoroughly, and cut them into small pieces. First, the roots are dried in air, and then fried in a frying pan until brown, ground in a coffee pot or pounded in a mortar. One teaspoon of powder per glass of boiling water makes very tasty coffee, and if you add a little milk and have a small piece of sugar, you will drink the drink with pleasure even in times of peace.”
Of the plant surrogate products, the most “civilized” was the cake remaining after squeezing oils from flaxseed, hemp, sunflower, soybean, cotton and other plants, colloquially referred to as duranda. The compressed duranda was sometimes so hard that it had to be broken with a hammer. Duranda was used to make porridge, flat cakes, soup, and pancakes. Some of its varieties (especially sunflower) were considered tasty and were valued in impromptu city markets. In a number of cases, duranda was issued as a ration product; it was also used in baking bread, as well as for making sweets. Meatballs, jellies and cakes made from cakes were often seen in canteens.
The Institute of Plant Science allowed the consumption of screenings (seeds that do not sprout) from famous collections. “We soaked, ground and cooked corn at home,” recalled Z.V., who worked at the institute. Yanushevich. Molasses was produced from yeast, adding sawdust to it (it was valued as a medicinal product), but most often they were used in soups. This yeast soup, “a whitish liquid of uncertain taste, not seasoned with anything,” was probably tried by every blockade survivor - often it was given out without requiring “card” coupons. It was done according to the testimony of D.S. Likhachev, quite simply: “They forced a mass of water with sawdust to ferment.” The “layout” of a bowl of soup in the regional factory kitchen was as follows: 15 grams of yeast, 3 grams of salt. If a little fat was added to the soup, a coupon for fat was torn from the card.
The shortage of bread forced the addition of adulterants to bread from November 1941. At first it was oatmeal, barley and soy flour. Then they began to use hydrocellulose more often, which sometimes made up about a quarter of the “bread” mass. The bread was heavy and damp, with sawdust; meat and bone meal was also used in its production. An improvement in the quality of bread began to be noticed from the end of January 1942, when American flour was brought to the city. “The bread is so wonderful, tasty, perfectly baked, with hundreds of crusts that you want to cry, why do you have so little right to eat it,” I.I. wrote in his diary. Zhilinsky January 30, 1942. In February 1942, bread became drier, and in October a number of bakeries even sold loaves made from wheat flour.
As hunger intensified, people were ready to eat everything, despite shame, disgust and disgust. The history of blockade food is not only the history of the collapse of human civilization, but also evidence of man’s resilience, his desire to survive no matter what. In the “time of death” they did not pay attention to the taste - as long as there was something that would at least for a moment satisfy this terrible, gut-wrenching hunger.
Yu.S. Yarov, Everyday life of besieged Leningrad
Annotation. Based on the study and synthesis of archival materials, the article examines the experience of organizing food supply for military personnel and civilians during the siege of Leningrad; describes additional sources of replenishment of food resources developed by Soviet scientists and specialists in siege conditions.
Summary . The article based on the study and generalization of archival materials studies the experience of food supply of military personnel and civilians during the siege of Leningrad; describes additional sources of replenishment of food resources developed by Soviet scientists and experts in the siege conditions.
MEDVEDEV Alexey Alekseevich- Head of the Department of Food Supply of the Volsky Military Institute of Material Support of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Colonel, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor
(Volsk. E-mail: [email protected]);
SHISKOV Vitaly Viktorovich- Professor of the Department of Food Supply of the Volsky Military Institute of Material Support of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, retired colonel, candidate of military sciences, professor
(Volsk. E-mail: vitvik-1952@ mail.ru)
FOOD SUPPLY TO BLOCKED LENINGRAD
The order of the Chief of Naval Staff of Nazi Germany No. 1601/41 dated September 29, 1941 stated: “The Fuhrer decided to wipe St. Petersburg off the face of the earth. The problem of living the population and supplying it is a problem that cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war... we are not interested in preserving even part of the population of this big city.”1
In the most difficult conditions of the Leningrad blockade, the issue of food supply for the troops of the active army defending the besieged Northern capital and its civilians became especially acute. Decisive actions of the Soviet and army leadership, maximum efforts and extraordinary decisions of scientists and production workers of the city on the Neva helped to avoid a more global humanitarian catastrophe and save hundreds of thousands of our soldiers and Leningrad blockade survivors from starvation.
During the Great Patriotic War, allowances for active army personnel were carried out according to the standards established by the USSR Government on September 20, 1941. These standards were set out in the order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR dated September 22, 1941 No. 312. The caloric content of the ration of soldiers in combat units was 3450 kcal2. The blockade of Leningrad affected the nutritional standards of military personnel who participated in the defense of the city. The food rations for bread, meat and fish were the most affected. Responsibility for the food supply of Leningrad by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the State Defense Committee was assigned to the deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, A.I. Mikoyan. D.V., People's Commissar of Trade of the RSFSR, was appointed as the State Defense Committee's representative for the food supply of the city and front troops. Pavlov, and the food commission created under the Military Council of the Front was headed by the secretary of the city party committee and member of the Military Council of the Front A.A. Kuznetsov.
During the siege of Leningrad, the following supply organization scheme was in effect. The trade department of the Leningrad City Executive Committee and the food departments of the Leningrad Front and the Baltic Fleet compiled requests for the required amount of food products, indicating the calendar dates for their delivery. These applications were considered by the Front's Military Council and then submitted to the USSR Government for approval. The USSR government, by special decisions, determined how much food, from which cities and regions, and within what time frame should be sent to Leningrad, and, accordingly, set firm tasks for its departments, enterprises and bases.
The Road of Life was of particular importance in providing the besieged city with food. The ice route operated for 152 days - from November 22, 1941 to April 23, 1942. During this time, 361,103 tons of cargo were delivered to Leningrad, including 270,976 tons of food. The supply of food along the Road of Life made it possible to create, by the spring of 1942, emergency two-month food supplies and carryover supplies within 6-8 days for the troops and the city population. As a result of the increased supply of food at the end of December 1941, the norm for the distribution of bread, and then meat, to the personnel of the troops of the Leningrad Front was increased. On February 8, 1942, the troops began to prepare hot food regularly three times a day. With the lifting of the blockade, food rations were brought to the general standards adopted in the Armed Forces.
However, the civilian population found themselves in much worse conditions, especially in the first months of the siege. Despite help from the mainland, it was necessary to mobilize all available domestic food resources and find new sources of their regular replenishment.
Before the war, Leningrad had a highly developed food industry, which not only met the needs of the city and region, but also satisfied the needs of other regions. However, there were no significant reserves in the city's warehouses. On June 21, 1941, Leningrad food reserves were: flour - for 52 days, cereals - for 89 days, meat - for 38 days, animal oil - for 47 days, vegetable oil - for 29 days3.
In accordance with the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR by decision of the Leningrad City Executive Committee dated July 17, 1941 No. 66, from July 18 in the cities of Leningrad, Kolpino, Kronstadt, Pushkin and Peterhof, a card system was introduced for the sale of bread, flour, cereals, pasta, sugar, confectionery, animals and vegetable oil, meat and meat products, fish and fish products4. Supply standards were established for four groups: 1) workers and engineering workers; 2) employees; 3) children under 12 years of age; 4) dependents. However, the introduction of the card system did not lead to large savings in food resources. In subsequent periods, supply standards were repeatedly reduced.
Therefore, the main disaster of Leningraders was an invisible and insidious enemy - hunger. According to the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the Nazi Invaders, 641,803 people died of starvation as a result of the blockade5. In those difficult days, everything was used as food for the city residents: hemp grains to feed canaries, blackbirds and parrots; flour paste washed off from wallpaper and book bindings; welded drive belts and other leather products; all kinds of technical oils. Drying oil, medicines, petroleum jelly, glycerin, and all kinds of waste plant materials were used as additives. They ate cats, dogs and crows.
In the “Siege Book” A. Adamovich and D. Granin wrote about the “Badaevsky sweet land”6. In September 1941, fascist aircraft set fire to the food warehouses of the Badaev plant. The fire destroyed about 3 thousand tons of flour and approximately 2,500 tons of refined sugar, which turned into a thick syrup mixed with the ground. This substance was sold in food markets. The quality and price of the “Badaev product” depended on what layer of earth it was - upper or lower. We consumed this mixture in small pieces: swallowed it and washed it down with boiling water.
The menu of the canteen of one of the workshops of the Kirov plant, dated in the spring of 1942, eloquently testifies that all pasture was eaten: cabbage soup from plantain, nettle and sorrel puree, cutlets from beet tops, quinoa balls, schnitzels from cabbage leaves, liver from cakes, duranda cakes, fishbone meal sauce, casein pancakes, yeast soup, soy milk (on coupons).
According to surviving archival data, in November-December 1941, mainly first courses were prepared in Leningrad canteens. Per serving of soup, 10 g of albumin, 5 g of salt and a little bay leaf were used. A serving of yeast soup contained 50 g of yeast, 7 g of potatoes and 5 g of salt7.
Vera Inber wrote in her Leningrad diary: “... June 6, 1944. In the morning I decided to go to the exhibition “Heroic Defense of Leningrad”. Catering section. Products and menus of Leningrad canteens during the days of the blockade: bark flour, scraps (i.e. leftovers swept away from everywhere) - went for flatbreads; protein yeast - for first courses; dextrin (technical waste) - for pancakes, casseroles, meatballs, cutlets; flaxseed meal - for main courses; albumin - for first courses; cellulose - for pancakes, meatballs, cutlets; race (a waste part of a textile machine made from pig skin) - for soup, jelly, cutlets; carpenter's glue and hide - for jelly. I stood for a particularly long time in front of a shop window designed like a bakery. It was a window, thickly overgrown with ice, only unevenly thawed in the center from the meager heat of two smokehouses.
In one gap there are scales: on one cup there are four small weights, on the other - 125 grams of bread, which is what most Leningraders received from November 20 to December 25, 1941. Above the scales in a glass flask is the flour of that time. Its composition included: defective rye flour - 50 percent; salt - 10 percent; cake - 10 percent; cellulose - 15 percent; soy flour - 5 percent; wallpaper dust - 5 percent; bran - 5 percent.”8.
According to eyewitnesses, in the first spring of the blockade of 1942, as soon as the grass came up, the population also took advantage of this herbal additive for cooking. In a short time there was not a single blade of grass left in the city.
Later, all the outskirts of Leningrad, city gardens, squares and vacant lots were plowed up by Leningraders for vegetable gardens. Cabbage, onions, carrots, potatoes and other vegetables were grown on the Field of Mars, St. Isaac's Square, and in the Summer Garden. A certain increase in food supplies was also achieved through the procurement of wild edible plants. In the Leningrad region there were more than 100 species (nettle, quinoa, sorrel, dandelion, hops, rose hips and others). Such herbal additives were used to prepare soups, main courses and drinks.
Food substitutes created by scientists played an important role in solving the food problem. As one of the main components of an admixture to flour, a group of specialists led by Professor of the Forestry Academy V.I. Sharkova proposed using cellulose, previously known only as a raw material for paper mills. Hydrocellulose does not contain anything nutritious, but it allows you to increase the baking temperature, i.e. bread yield. At the end of November, food pulp began to arrive at bakeries. Its production was established at six city enterprises. In total, during the years of the blockade, Leningrad bakeries produced about 16 thousand tons of food cellulose9.
Professor of the Agricultural Institute M.N. Knyaginichev developed a yeast mixture that required the least amount of dry flour for baking. This also made it possible to increase the yield of grain products by 1 percent, which, under the conditions of the famine blockade, had a noticeable economic effect10.<…>
Read the full version of the article in the paper version of the Military Historical Journal and on the website of the Scientific Electronic Libraryhttp: www. library. ru
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NOTES
1 Nuremberg trials of the main German war criminals. Collection of materials: In 7 volumes / Ed. ed. R.A. Rudenko. M.: State Publishing House of Legal Literature, 1957. P. 37.
2 Rear of the Soviet Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. / Ed. S.K. Kurkotkina. M.: Voenizdat, 1977. P. 194.
3 Karasev A.V. Leningraders during the siege. M.: Publishing house. Academy of Sciences, 1959. P. 127.
4,900 heroic days. Collection of documents and materials about the heroic struggle of the working people of Leningrad in 1941-1944. M: Nauka, 1966. P. 227.
5 Karasev A.V. Decree. Op. P. 185.
6 Adamovich A., Granin D. Blockade book. M.: Soviet writer, 1979. P. 135.
7 Khudyakova N.D. The whole country is with Leningrad. L.: Lenizdat, 1960. P. 86.
8 Inber V. Almost three years (Leningrad diary). M.: Soviet Russia, 1968. P. 53.
9 Sobolev G.L. Scientists of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War. M.: Nauka, 1966. P. 61.
They preferred not to say out loud that the top leadership of besieged Leningrad did not suffer from hunger and cold. The few residents of well-fed besieged Leningrad were silent. But not all. For Gennady Alekseevich Petrov, Smolny is his home. There he was born in 1925 and lived with short breaks until 1943. During the war, he performed responsible work - he was on the kitchen team at Smolny.
My mother, Daria Petrovna, worked in the catering department of Smolny since 1918. She was a server, and a dishwasher, and worked in a government cafeteria, and in a pigsty - wherever necessary,” he says. - After the murder of Kirov, “purges” began among the service personnel, many were fired, but she was left behind. We occupied apartment ≤ 215 in the economic part of Smolny. In August 1941, the “private sector” - as we were called - was evicted, and the premises were occupied by a military garrison. We were given a room, but my mother remained in Smolny in a barracks position. In December 1941, she was wounded during shelling. During the month in the hospital she became terribly thin. Fortunately, we were helped by the family of Vasily Ilyich Tarakanshchikov, the driver of the commandant of Smolny, who remained to live in the economic section. They settled us with them, and thereby saved us. After some time, my mother again began working in the government canteen, and I was included in the kitchen team.
There were several canteens and buffets in Smolny. In the southern wing there was a dining room for the apparatus of the city committee, the city executive committee and the headquarters of the Leningrad Front. Before the revolution, Smolensk girls ate there. And in the northern, “secretary” wing, there was a government canteen for the party elite - secretaries of the city committee and city executive committee, heads of departments. In the past, it was a dining room for the heads of the Institute of Noble Maidens. The first secretary of the regional committee, Zhdanov, and the chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee, Popkov, also had buffets on the floors. In addition, Zhdanov had a personal chef who worked in the so-called “infection” - a former isolation ward for sick Smolensk residents. Zhdanov and Popkov had offices there. There was also a so-called “delegate” canteen for ordinary workers and guests, everything was simpler there. Each canteen was served by its own people who had a certain clearance. For example, I served the canteen for the apparatus - the one in the south wing. I had to light the stove, keep the fire going, supply food for distribution, and wash the pots.
Until mid-November 1941, bread lay freely on the tables there, without rationing. Then they started to take him away. Cards were introduced - for breakfast, lunch and dinner - in addition to those that all Leningraders had. A typical breakfast, for example, is millet or buckwheat porridge, sugar, tea, a bun or pie. Lunch was always three courses. If a person did not give his usual ration card to relatives, then he received a meat dish as a side dish. And so the usual food is dry potatoes, vermicelli, noodles, peas.
And in the government canteen where my mother worked, there was absolutely everything, without restrictions, like in the Kremlin. Fruits, vegetables, caviar, cakes. Milk, eggs and sour cream were delivered from a subsidiary farm in the Vsevolozhsk region near Melnichny Ruchey. The bakery baked a variety of cakes and buns. The baking was so soft - you bend the loaf, but it unbends on its own. Everything was stored in the pantry. The storekeeper Soloviev was in charge of this farm. He looked like Kalinin - he had a wedge-shaped beard.
Of course, we also received some from generosity. Before the war, we had everything at home - caviar, chocolate, and candy. During the war, of course, it got worse, but still my mother brought meat, fish, butter, and potatoes from the dining room. We, the service staff, lived like one family. We tried to support each other and helped whoever we could. For example, the boilers that I washed were steamed all day long, and a crust stuck to them. It had to be scraped off and thrown away. Naturally, I didn't do this. People lived here in Smolny, I gave to them. The soldiers guarding Smolny were hungry. Usually two Red Army soldiers and an officer were on duty in the kitchen. I gave them the rest of the soup, scraped together. And the kitchen men from the government canteen also fed whoever they could. We also tried to get people to work in Smolny. So, we hired our former neighbor Olya first as a cleaner and then as a manicurist. Some city leaders were getting manicures. Zhdanov, by the way, did. Then even a hairdresser opened there. In general, Smolny had everything - electricity, water, heating, and sewerage.
Mom worked in Smolny until 1943, then she was transferred to the canteen of the Leningrad City Executive Committee. It was a downgrade. The fact is that her relatives ended up in occupied territory. And in 1943 I turned 18, and I went to the front.