Inferno - Max Hastings [200]
Conditions in Leningrad progressively eased, though Russia’s second city remained under bombardment. Its inhabitants were still desperately hungry, but most received just sufficient food to sustain life. In March 1942, the authorities launched a campaign to clear the streets of snow, debris and rubble, in which hundreds of thousands of citizens participated. In April, a new commander was appointed, Lt. Gen. Leonid Govorov. Though a taciturn man, the forty-five-year-old gunner was intelligent, cultured and humane. The NKVD reported from Leningrad during the summer: “In connection with the improvement in the food situation in June, the death rate went down by a third … The number of incidents of use of human flesh in food supply decreased. Whereas 236 people were arrested for this crime in May, in June it was just 56.”
Yet for soldiers on the line in the north, horror remained a constant. Nikolai Nikulin noted in his diary on 18 August that all that was left of his own division was some cooks and NCOs. He complained that the morning issue of porridge was often laced with shrapnel, and he was tormented by thirst: “During the night I crawled twice to a shell crater for water. It was as thick and brown as coffee, and smelt of explosives and something else. In the morning, I saw a black crooked hand protruding from that crater. My tunic and trousers are as stiff as cardboard with mud and blood, the knees and elbows holed by crawling on them. I have thrown away my helmet—not many people wear them here; one normally shits into a helmet, then throws it out of the trench. The corpse near me stinks unbearably; there are so many of them around, old and new. Some turn black as they dry, and lie in all sorts of postures. Here and there in the trench one sees body parts trampled into the mud—a flattened face, a hand, all as brown as the soil. We walk on them.”
At the end of August, the Germans suddenly abandoned their strategy of containment, and launched a major offensive to take Leningrad. When this failed, the Russians countered with their own attack, which achieved dramatic gains. Some cultural life revived in the city: there were art exhibitions, concerts, and a performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony in the Philharmonic Hall. The people of Leningrad now had sufficient faith in their own survival to turn their minds to the plight of their fellow sufferers in Stalingrad. Vera Inber wrote: “It shows in the expression on people’s faces, in the trams, on the streets: all the time we feel for Stalingrad … Now everything will be decided at Stalingrad—the whole fate of the war.”
Through the winter of 1942, Leningrad continued to be bombed and shelled. One barrage began during a theatre performance: partway through the second act of the premiere of a comedy about the Baltic Fleet, The Wide Wide Sea, an actor appeared in front of the curtain and demanded of the audience, “What shall we do, comrades? Take shelter or continue?” There was thunderous applause and cries of “Continue!” On 12 January 1943, Govorov was ready to launch a new offensive to break the blockade. Zhukov revisited the city, and set his own stamp on operations. As usual indifferent to casualties, he demanded caustically, “Who are these cowards of yours who don’t want to fight?” On 16 January, the key position of Shilisselburg was recaptured,