The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: Science and Sacrifice in a City Under Siege
50 comments
·January 31, 2025discmonkey
pjc50
Thanks for this personal story with the historical connection.
I would like to invite the audience to remember how many similar stories are being played out in the present day.
actinium226
A family friend was 7 years old in Leningrad when the siege started. He talked proudly of finding a cat and killing it so that he could bring it home for his aunt to cook (his father was conscripted and his mother was already dead). He talked about how they would peel down the wallpaper because the glue used to put it up before the war contained flour, and so a very weak sort of soup could be made from it.
They evacuated him over Lake Ladoga to Siberia where he spent the war. His father returned to Leningrad after the war and made contact, and they sent him at 10 years old by himself on the trans-Siberian railway back to Leningrad with a sack of potatoes to eat/trade.
Back at school in Leningrad they saw German POWs helping cleanup/rebuild and they would trade with them.
He also remembers enjoying American movies in the late 40's, before they were banned.
gullywhumper
David Benioff’s (Game of Thrones show runner) City of Thieves is a very entertaining book set during the siege. It was an inspiration for The Last of Us video game (and later HBO series)
Synaesthesia
I've heard of this story before, the scientists who saved seeds and refused to eat them, despite the starvation everywhere.
It's remarkable that they sacrificed even their own lives to this end.
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lovegrenoble
Shostakovich's symphony is marvelous
etc-hosts
The experience of Vladimir Putin's parents in the siege continue to shape Putin's views.
Synaesthesia
World War 2 or as it's called in Russia, the Great Patriotic war shapes Russia's perception a lot more than W22 does anywhere in the west.
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rdtsc
[flagged]
pjc50
It seems from Wikipedia that there was a relief attempt, which failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lyuban
We'd need some maps, but I can't see how an encircled city could be supplied?
rtkwe
It would depend on there already being beach landing craft in the lake when the encirclement happened. There weren't any other major ports on the lake at the time other than Leningrad and Shlisselburg which the was on the German side of the front and heavily contested. The German line also went to the Southern bank of the River there up until it turned North West to get into the city so you couldn't use that so the options for bringing food in via the lake were pretty limited and any losses would be effectively permanent until the siege was broken.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Leningra...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Si...
https://64.media.tumblr.com/8fcb0d31607d4cd05fbe82998afc91ef...
actinium226
It was supplied over Lake Ladoga when the ice froze, but unfortunately the ice froze later in the year than usual and thawed earlier than usual during that first winter. It was dangerous stuff when the ice was thin, but when it was thick you could drive a tank over it, and they did.
Later on they were able to partially lift the siege in the south east just below the lake and could get some supplies in by train.
Of course it's always possible to get small quantities in, but to feed a city of millions....
braincat31415
"could have supplied it if they wanted to. They just chose not to."
A simple google search will tell you the opposite.
mathieuh
Would it not have been the people besieging the city who were responsible?
rdtsc
That goes without saying. But the Soviets chose to abandon it. Brutality from the enemy wouldn't be that surprising, betrayal by your own government is.
The article mentions it below even:
> The betrayal came from the top. Stalin, neglecting the relevant intelligence and then focusing on Moscow, all but abandoned Leningrad, while his apparatchiks appeared at public baths milky and fat in their privilege. The man in charge of the city, Andrei Zhdanov, enjoyed butter on his bread and lashings of caviar while those in his care ate their pets, sometimes their neighbours, and fashioned tagliatelle out of slow-boiled strips of leather. Nor did the Soviets acknowledge the extent of the suffering.
anothercoup
> But the Soviets chose to abandon it.
They "chose" to abandon it? Weren't they forced to retreat by the german army who encircled it and chose to starve out the population rather than directly attack the city?
> The article mentions it below even:
That reads like ww2 german propaganda. What did you expect. People in moscow to starve also? "Lashings of caviar"? Give me a break.
Also, once the soviets repelled the german attack on moscow, didn't the soviets liberate leningrad? If the soviets were as cruel as you claim, why would they even bother? Not only that, it's known the soviets tried to get food into the city even before they liberated the city.
> Nor did the Soviets acknowledge the extent of the suffering.
Is this a joke? The soviets took every opportunity to paint the germans as barbaric. The starvation of leningrad isn't some secret nobody knew about.
The easiest way to tell if some historical anecdote is true or not is how cartoonish the caricature becomes. Both on the positive/heroic and negative/villain side of the history.
jacob-s-son
My great-grandfather was wounded during WW2 and after lengthy rehabilitation his command reassigned him from active combat duty to Ladoga’s “road of life”. The trucks would routinely attempt to cross the lake during winter with canned goods and were regularly blown up or sunken through the cracked ice. My great-grandfather was a trained diver, his task was to pull up crates from sunken trucks. So there definitely were attempts to deliver food. You talk about how easy it could have been to supply the city given the intent, but I encourage you to read how hunger stroked has been Gaza in the past year. And they were not surrounded by Nazis, who would indiscriminately blow up to pieces any approaching vehicle.
actinium226
I haven't seen anyone talk about how easy it could have been to supply the city given the intent but I agree with you that it's a silly statement.
People don't understand how desperate it was. There was enough food in the USSR to keep it supplied, but creating a logistics chain from literal scratch in the middle of a war when not even the army has enough trucks and other logistical supplies for its own needs is a dire situation. The trucks from lend lease were a massive help.
ceejayoz
> They ruled the skies even at night?
rdtsc
None of those technologies: newly developed radar, or even more exotic night vision at that time, would have allowed them to bomb ships at night over lake Ladoga. Dive bombing would have worked but not at night.
ceejayoz
Radar's useful for finding ships.
Radio's useful for telling the planes where those ships are.
Even before radar, night missions were a thing (even in pre-radar WWI, a little). It's rarely completely dark out.
And as a bonus, supplies have to be loaded and unloaded, which tends to take time. The day comes eventually, and the loading points on the other side of the lake would've been well within range.
rtkwe
From which port? to which port? with what ships? The Germans owned the bank of the river between the lake and Leningrad until the river turned North West. There doesn't appear to be much of a port on the parts of the lake still controlled by the Soviets during the siege either.
Mikhail_K
> The sad part is the starvation and suffering was brought about by their own government.
That is not true. The starvation was planned by Hitler and he gave explicit directives to that effect. You're essentially reproducing the nazi propaganda.
rdtsc
> You're essentially reproducing the nazi propaganda.
And you're essentially reproducing Soviet propaganda. Over the years they covered it up extensively. If you read the article it mentions but doesn't go into details:
"The betrayal came from the top. Stalin, neglecting the relevant intelligence and then focusing on Moscow, all but abandoned Leningrad, while his apparatchiks appeared at public baths milky and fat in their privilege. The man in charge of the city, Andrei Zhdanov, enjoyed butter on his bread and lashings of caviar while those in his care ate their pets, sometimes their neighbours, and fashioned tagliatelle out of slow-boiled strips of leather."
pjc50
This really is a "what if both sides were indifferent to the value of human life?" situation.
wordpad25
Lets not forget that's where WW2 was fought and won. With two thirds of German army committed to eastern front, the entire D-day Normandy is just a pheriphiral operation.
Even Soviet propaganda aside, Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg now) objectively wasn't abandoned due to naked greed of the elite, after all USSR was fighting for survival and had to make tough decisions. Even if Stalin didn't care about the people, the city itself was really important strategically.
neves
Minimizing the suffering of Soviet people in the WWII is always wrong. Sure members ate better than, but they still suffered. Caviar is a local and canned food. The Soviet people saved the world from the Nazi horror, and we must forever grateful.
regularization
> Stalin, neglecting the relevant intelligence and then focusing on Moscow
The seventh panzer division was within 29 km of Moscow in November, I am not sure how much or how strategic diverting resources from Moscow's defense could help Leningrad.
Mikhail_K
>>> The sad part is the starvation and suffering was brought about by their own government.
>> That is not true. The starvation was planned by Hitler and he gave explicit directives
>> to that effect. You're essentially reproducing the nazi propaganda.
> And you're essentially reproducing Soviet propaganda.
Are you actually claiming that the explicit Hitler's order to starve the city and bombard into submission is "Soviet propaganda"? Per Generalplan "Ost", city was to be flooded, population - starved.
You are engaging in literal genocide denial here.
Synaesthesia
Hundreds of thousands of people did not starve to death because of one man.
The Nazis wanted to starve millions of Russians to death. They even had a plan to do it and talked about it publicly.
My great-grandmother and grandfather were in Leningrad during the siege. My great-grandmother continued to teach throughout. At some point she was given the option to evacuate with my (very) young grandfather over the "road of life".
As my mother tells the story, my great grandmother had the choice of either taking a bus, or hanging on to the back of some delivery truck. She chose the truck. The bus broke through the ice and disappeared under the water.
It's strange to realize how close one can be to not being "here" and how history weaves its way through your blood and ends up on the front page of hackernews.