The Confrontation Between Life and Death: Some Results of Studying the History of the Siege of Leningrad

Abstract

The authors focus on the assessment and characterization of the mortality rate of the civilian population, which waged a heroic struggle for survival. The number of victims in besieged Leningrad, as cited by researchers in published works, was “regulated” by the Communist Party leadership for several decades. The situation changed at the turn of the 1980s — 1990s, when historians gained access to previously secret documents. This article poses a problem that Leningrad doctors drew attention to in late autumn 1941. Their proposals for the treatment of alimentary dystrophy, the main affliction of civilians in the blocked city, were not immediately appreciated by Leningrad’s leaders at that time. The presence of various data on the mortality rate of the population during the blockade is understandable: these data were collected at different times by various organizations and individuals, based on far from complete data. The authors emphasize that it is impossible to assess the decline in the city’s population solely using y the number of ration cards in circulation. This approach, for a number of reasons, distorts b the real state of affairs. The city’s statistical department, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and the registry offices, which were under its jurisdiction, had their own estimates of the number of civilian victims. Today there is no consensus regarding the completeness of information on the scale of burials in city cemeteries during the blockade winter of 1941/42. The article concludes that there is a need for a wider introduction of previously unknown archival materials into circulation to help to clarify the number of victims of the Blockade of Leningrad, which, according to the authors, reached 750 thousand.