Tragic Agency and a Final Rubicon

Abstract

Author believes that this book is about exploring what happens to a city, a society, the Soviet system when subjected to extreme shock, such as hunger, starvation and siege. Jeffrey Hass looks at how the Soviet system was “tested” by these events, making the case that the Blockade is a “better case” than Stalingrad or the defense of Moscow for understanding the war, duress and survival. The book discusses cannibalism as a prism into the book’s approach and findings. It looks at the breaking of the severe taboo and how people were torn between survival and sympathy, egoism and altruism, cooperation and opportunism in the midst of the “dictatorship of the stomach” and “food psychosis”. It shows how consuming human flesh was seen as the extreme on a continuum of norm-breaking in terms of what was considered food. Jeffrey Hass explores the authorities’ handling of cases of cannibalism, the prevalence and punishment of the phenomenon, as well as the symbolic dimensions of the transgression. It looks at the voices of people who violated the taboo, and the mercy they asked for. The book is ultimately about the heightened agency people were forced to take in the face of death, and the tragic decisions they made in order to survive.