"Rum women" of besieged Leningrad

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The mystery of the blockade photographs

When I was translating the book by Hasso Stakhov "Tragedy on the Neva" (Publishing house "Tsentrpoligraf, Moscow, 2008), I drew attention to the following phrase:" Only today photographs from Soviet archives have become available showing us the production of cakes and sweets at Leningrad confectionery factories for the party elite in Smolny. They were dated December 1941, when hundreds of people were already dying of hunger every day”(pp. 7-8).

To be honest, I did not believe the German writer then. But by virtue of his military profession, as a former officer of information and analytical services, he became interested in the source that Stakhov used. It turned out to be the German book "Blockade Leningrad 1941-1944" (Rowolt Publishing House, 1992), where these photographs are placed. The authors referred to the fact that the images they found belonged to the Central State Archive of Cinematography and Photo Documents in St. Petersburg.

Having visited him, he showed there a German book with these photographs. Nearby I put on the table the recently published photo album “Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War” (Publishing Printing Service Center, St. Petersburg, 2005) with an explanatory text by Valentin Mikhailovich Kovalchuk, Doctor of Historical Sciences. In it on page 78 was presented just one of the "German" photographs.

The signature in the domestic photo album read: 12.12.1941 2nd confectionery factory. Head of the shop A. N. Pavlov, master confectioner S. A. Krasnobaev and assistant E. F. Zakharova inspecting the finished loaves … Kovalchuk was firmly convinced that it was exclusively about the blockade bread.

The German version of the signature was the same except for the last words. They sounded like “finished product inspection”. That is, the meaning of this phrase was broader.

I was looking forward to when they bring the original photo to find out if they were bread loaves or some other products that looked most like chocolate bars?

When the employees of the archive put this picture on the table, it turned out that it was taken on December 12, 1941 by the journalist A. Mikhailov. He was a well-known TASS photojournalist, that is, he took pictures by an official order, which is important for further understanding the situation.

It is possible that Mikhailov, indeed, received an official order in order to calm down the Soviet people living on the mainland. It was necessary to show the Soviet people that the situation in Leningrad was not so dire. Therefore, one of the confectionery factories was taken as an object, which, as it turned out, really continued to make sweet products for the elite in the hungry city, according to the so-called "letter ration". It was used by persons at the level of corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences, famous writers such as Vsevolod Vishnevsky, high-ranking military and party leaders, responsible workers of Smolny. As it turned out, there were not so few of them, considering that at least the whole workshop of the confectionery factory worked for them. And no blockade cards were applied to these products.

Moreover, it was classified, at the level of military secrets, like the production of ammunition and military equipment.

It is possible that this photograph was actually published in one of the Soviet newspapers. Perhaps the contrast in the picture was specially increased in order to blacken the look of the manufactured products, turning them into “ready-made loaves”. But this is just my guess. Most likely, the customers of the photo realized that this was already overkill and hid it in the archive for a long time.

What was written under the photograph immediately after its production is unknown. The archival card for the photograph was drawn up on October 3, 1974, and it was then that a record was made about the inspection of the "ready-made loaves". Apparently, the compiler of the card, due to the sharp contrast of the picture, did not see the nature of the product, but paid attention exclusively to the haggard faces. Or maybe he didn’t want to see it. It is symbolic that the photo received a similar signature in the 70s. At this time, on the wave of the personality cult of Brezhnev and the leadership of the CPSU, the idea was widely promoted that the famine of the blockade had engulfed everyone without exception, and, of course, the party apparatus, as an "integral part of the people." Then the slogan was introduced everywhere: "The people and the party are one."

Therefore, no one should have even thought that the production of chocolates continued at the confectionery factory in the blockade winter of 1941, as documentary photographs now confirm.

In the same archive, I managed to find two more interesting pictures.

On the first of them (see the photo at the beginning of the article), where a man is shown in close-up against the background of cakes spread all over the table, there is the following signature:

« The best shift foreman of the "Enskoy" confectionery factory "VA Abakumov. The team under his leadership regularly overfulfills the norm. In the photo: Comrade Abakumov checks the quality of the baked goods of the Viennese Pastries. 12.12.1941 Photo: A. Mikhailov, TASS ».

Another photograph depicts the making of the Baba Rum. The signature reads: "12.12.1941. Making "rum babies" at the 2nd confectionery factory. A. Mikhailov TASS "

As you can see from these signatures, there was no longer any secret about the nature of the product. I confess that when I realized all this, it became very bitter. There was a feeling that you were deceived, moreover in the most shameless way. It turned out that I had existed in the dope of lies for many years, but it was even more offensive to realize that thousands of my fellow Leningraders still live in this dope.

Perhaps that is why I began to tell people the story of these photographs in various audiences. I was more and more interested in their reaction to this. Most people at first met this information with hostility. When I showed the pictures, there was silence, and then people started talking, as if they were bursting.

Here is what, for example, Maya Aleksandrovna Sergeeva, head of the library at the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, told. It turned out that such cases were known to her from stories. In the summer of 1950, while still a girl, she heard a similar story at a dacha near Leningrad, when she saw a woman who hung 17 coats to dry. Sergeeva asked: "Whose things are these?" She replied that they belonged to her since the blockade. "How so?" - the girl was surprised.

It turned out that the woman worked in a chocolate factory in besieged Leningrad. Chocolates and sweets, as well as other confectionery products, were made, according to her, there continuously throughout the blockade. Inside the factory it was possible to consume all the chocolate products without any restrictions. But it was strictly forbidden, under the threat of execution, to take anything outside. The mother of this woman at that time was dying of hunger, and then she decided to take out the pack of chocolate, hiding it under her hair. She had surprisingly thick hair, which she retained well into the 50s. The most difficult and frightening thing was to carry the first pack of stolen goods. But thanks to this, the mother survived.

Then she began to do this regularly, selling chocolates or exchanging them for bread and other things that were in special demand at flea markets. Gradually, she began to have enough money not only to buy bread, but also to purchase expensive products. Probably 17 coats are not all that she managed to bargain for in hungry Leningrad, when people sold everything for a pittance. This was especially evident when in the spring and summer of 1942 the population was sent to evacuation in an organized manner. Advertisements pasted on the walls about the urgent sale of things, essentially for a pittance, were everywhere. Speculators took advantage of this in the first place.

Recently I read in A. Panteleev's book "Living Monuments" ("Soviet Writer, 1967, on page 125) that at the very fierce time of the blockade, a telegraphic request came to the Leningrad regional committee of trade unions from Kuibyshev, where the Soviet government was evacuated:" Inform cross-country skiing results and number of participants”.

After that, I finally admitted that Hasso Stakhov was right, who wrote in "Tragedy on the Neva" that "the carrot was intended for the red masters, and the whip and death for the people."

Yuri Lebedev