Jane Ridley

Truth is stranger than fiction

Jane Ridley on a history and a fiction of Leningrad 

issue 28 June 2008

Jane Ridley on a history and a fiction of Leningrad 

The siege of Leningrad is the ultimate nightmare: what happens when you push humanity to its utmost limits. The German armies advanced on Leningrad and besieged it in September, 1941. The siege lasted for almost 900 days, but the first winter was the worst. Bread, water, power, fuel all ran out. As the icy winter temperatures fell below minus 30 Celsius, people died of starvation at a rate of 20,000 a day.

The streets were piled high with corpses: people were too weak to move their dead, and the ground was too frozen to bury them. Michael Jones, in his historical account of the siege, explores the moment when humanity changed. At first, the Leningraders were altruistic and tried to help each other. But after months of German bombardment, sawdust bread and starvation, it became a dog-eat-dog struggle for survival.

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