As a result of military operations, Leningrad suffered enormous damage. Over the entire period of the war, the enemy dropped more than 5 thousand high-explosive and 100 thousand incendiary bombs and about 150 thousand artillery shells on Leningrad. In the city, about 5 million square meters of living space, 500 schools, 170 medical institutions, etc. were destroyed and damaged, almost every house was damaged. 3,174 buildings were completely destroyed and 7,143 were damaged by enemy aircraft and artillery strikes. The losses of the municipal economy were estimated at 5.5 billion rubles, which amounted to 25% of the value of fixed assets of the city economy.
The Nazi barbarians destroyed and damaged hundreds of the most valuable historical monuments of Russian and world culture. Bombs and shells hit many historical buildings; to the Opera House (formerly Mariinsky), Engineering Castle, Russian Museum, Hermitage, Winter Palace, etc. Wonderful suburbs were destroyed: Petrodvorets (former Peterhof), Pushkin, Pavlovsk, Strelna, Uritsk, etc.
Two months after the liberation of Leningrad from the enemy blockade, on March 29, 1944, the State Defense Committee (GKO) adopted a decision “On priority measures to restore the industry and urban economy of Leningrad in 1944.”
In 1945, Leningrad industry had already fulfilled the plan for gross output by 102.5%. Leningrad began to provide the front with a large amount of military equipment, ammunition, and equipment. A number of factories began to establish the production of radar, flight test and other complex equipment, powerful radio stations, forging equipment, etc. Industry was restored to a new, higher level, taking into account advanced science and technology, new technology. Volume of capital work for 1944-1945. amounted to about 2 billion rubles.
The Fourth Five-Year Plan (1946-1950) provided for the accelerated restoration of Leningrad as the largest industrial and cultural center of the country, the achievement of the pre-war level of production of Leningrad industry and its further development.
The party organization and the working people of Leningrad faced extremely difficult tasks. The gross output of all enterprises in 1945 was only 32% of the 1940 level. In September 1945, there were 749.7 thousand workers and employees in the city.
Work to restore industry and urban services began after the blockade was lifted. Already in 1944, many workshops and workshops of Elektrosila, Metallichesky and other plants and factories damaged during the war were restored and returned to service. The restoration of Lenenergo power plants presented significant difficulties. In 1945, they produced only 366 million kWh. In 1940, these power plants provided 1598 million kWh of electricity. The pre-war level of electricity production from these stations was significantly exceeded by the end of the Fifth Five-Year Plan.
Simultaneously with the restoration and development of the city's industry, Leningraders restored residential buildings and architectural monuments. “We defended Leningrad - we will make it even more beautiful and better.” Under this slogan, the Communists of Leningrad encouraged hundreds of thousands of Leningraders to actively participate in restoration work. By the thirtieth anniversary of the October Revolution (1947), Leningrad had largely restored its pre-war appearance.
In the restoration of Leningrad, innovators became famous for their patriotic work: masonry master A. Kulikov, roofers Preobrazhensky brothers, plasterers Z. Safin, I. Karpov and many other builders. Bricklayer A. Parfenov and his team laid more than 4 million bricks, fulfilling 4 annual standards.
Tens of thousands of Leningraders, at the call of the party organization, restored the city, its enterprises, and historical monuments every day during hours free from their main work.
At the initiative of Leningraders, a patriotic movement for the creative community of workers in science and production began in the country. At Leningrad enterprises, the work methods of Muscovites L. Korabelnikova, A. Chutkikh, I. Rossiysky, F. Kovalev and other notable production innovators were studied and began to be applied. Workers, engineers and technicians of the Skorokhod factory, supporting the initiative of the workers of the Kupavino factory in the Moscow region M. Rozhneva and L. Kononeko, aimed at above-plan production through savings, made 38 thousand pairs of shoes from saved chrome in just 4 months of 1949 over plan.
Turner G. Bortkevich, a turner at the Leningrad Machine Tool Plant named after Ya. M. Sverdlov, initiated high-speed cutting of metal, sharply increased the speed of rotation of the part being turned, and used cutters of improved geometry with plates made of hard alloys. As a result of the use of innovative labor methods, G. Bortkevich brought production to 1400% of the norm; his initiative was taken up by turners at Leningrad enterprises.
The fourth five-year plan was completed by Leningraders ahead of schedule. In 1950, the gross output of Leningrad enterprises amounted to 128% compared to 1940, and the number of workers and employees was lower than pre-war (1317.1 thousand people versus 1467.3 thousand people in 1940). Heavy industry naturally outstripped other industries in the city in its development. In 1950 it was 16 times higher than the level of 1913.
During the fifth five-year plan (1951-1956), Leningraders solved the task set by the Communist Party and the Soviet government - to develop Leningrad as one of the centers of further technical progress. The metal plant began manufacturing hydraulic turbines of a power that in the past was considered a monopoly of American enterprises. At the Elektrosila plant, under the leadership of chief engineer D. Efremov and chief designer E. Komar, a new design of a 100 thousand kW hydrogen-cooled turbogenerator was developed,
New forms of socialist competition became widespread at enterprises in Leningrad. In December 1953, the staff of the Elektrosila plant named after S. M. Kirov proposed to launch socialist competition to increase production output through better use of existing production space and equipment. With their production successes, the workers of Leningrad made a significant contribution to the early implementation of the fifth five-year plan in 4 years and 4 months.
The total industrial output of Leningrad in 1955 increased by 83% compared to 1950 and amounted to 234% compared to 1940. The output of large-scale industrial enterprises was almost 29 times higher than the level of 1913 and more than 20 times higher than in 1928 The number of workers and employees in September 1955 was 1535.8 thousand people. The successes of Leningrad's industry were achieved not due to an increase in the workforce, but mainly due to an increase in labor productivity. In 1955, compared to 1950, output per worker increased by 45%.
Machine-building enterprises in Leningrad mastered and produced 354 important new types of machines, mechanisms, apparatus and instruments.
Taking into account the capabilities and internal reserves of production, workers of the Leningrad industry, in response to the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU (1956), took upon themselves the obligation: in the sixth five-year plan (1956-1960) to double gross output on the same production areas and with the same number of workers. During the Sixth Five-Year Plan, Leningrad will give the country six types of new hydraulic turbines, including giant turbines with a capacity of up to 300 thousand kW for the hydroelectric power stations of Siberia, i.e., almost three times the power of the machines installed at the Kuibyshev hydroelectric power station.
The V.V. Kuibyshev Carburetor Plant should produce 4 times more carburetors in the same production areas than in the previous five years. The plant named after L. M. Sverdlov will master the production of new types of large horizontal boring machines. The world's first nuclear-powered icebreaker, Lenin, is being built at one of the shipyards in Leningrad. At the Baltic Shipyard named after S. Ordzhonikidze in 1956, powerful refrigerated diesel-electric ships were built for the fisheries of the Far East, and the construction of ships for the Greater Volga began.
Leningraders completed the plan for the first year of the Sixth Five-Year Plan ahead of schedule. Compared to 1955, gross output at city enterprises increased in 1956 by 11%. As before, heavy industry developed at a particularly rapid pace, the gross output of which in 1956 increased by 15.7% compared to 1955, almost 32 times higher than the output of 1913 and more than 23 times higher than the output of 1928.
Major successes in implementing the state plan were achieved by the following plants: Kirovsky, Nevsky Machine-Building Plant named after V.I. Lenin, “Svetlana”, “Sevkabel”, rubber technical products, Proletarsky Locomotive Repair Plant, Kanonersky, Mill Plant named after V.I. Lenin, factory named after N. K. Krupskaya and other enterprises.
In 1956, new progressive initiatives arose at Leningrad enterprises. The famous turner of the Kirov plant V. Karasev, in collaboration with milling machine operator E. Savich and other workers, in 1956 designed a new milling cutter that made it possible to increase labor productivity several times. V. Ya. Karasev was a delegate to the 20th Congress of the CPSU and was elected as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The innovators of the Kirov plant, milling machine operator A. Loginov and mechanic P. Zaichenko, initiated the movement for high-performance technical equipment and the comprehensive introduction of advanced labor methods at every workplace. The innovative blacksmith of the Nevsky Machine-Building Plant, I. Burlakov, who in January 1957 was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, enjoys well-deserved fame among the working people of Leningrad. Innovators are well known in Leningrad - weaver of the Rabochiy factory, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR M. Materikova, cutter of the Skorokhod factory A. Svyatskaya. E. Sudakov, an innovative mechanic at the Elektrosila stamping shop, designed ten original presses and machines. Over the course of 7 years, shipbuilder foreman K. Saburov made 69 rationalization and inventive proposals and all of them were accepted for implementation into production.
Scientific research institutes and organizations of Leningrad are all-Union laboratories of technical progress. They tirelessly enrich the country's science and industry with the latest discoveries in the field of technology and production technology. The city has about 300 research institutes, higher educational institutions and institutions of the USSR Academy of Sciences. They employ about 13 thousand researchers. Many of the largest Soviet scientists work in Leningrad, making their creative contribution to the development of Soviet and world science.
The material well-being of Leningrad workers is increasing, housing and living conditions are improving. Housing construction is being carried out on a broad front, although the rapid growth rate of living space still does not keep pace with the needs of the city, whose population in 1956, including its suburbs, was 3,176 thousand people. In the sixth five-year plan it is planned to build up to 4 million square meters. m of living space. Freight taxis https://gruzovoe.taxi/ will help citizens in the shortest possible time to carry out such a long-awaited housewarming.
By the 38th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution, work was completed on the first section (Vosstaniya Square - Avtovo) of the Leningrad Metro named after V. I. Lenin. In 1957, construction of the second section from Vosstaniya Square to Finlyandsky Station was completed. Preparatory work is underway for the construction of new metro lines.
Leningraders are making a great contribution to the implementation of the party’s decision on a steep rise in agriculture. Hundreds of party, Soviet and scientific workers, responding to the calls of the party, went to the villages and were elected chairmen of collective farms. The Leningrad Party organization sent over 30 thousand people to agriculture and to the development of virgin and fallow lands. At the call of the party and government, 18 thousand young Leningraders left to develop virgin and fallow lands. In addition, 9 thousand people. went to the northern and eastern new buildings of the country.
In May - June 1957, based on the decisions of the February (1957) plenum of the CPSU Central Committee and the decisions of the VII session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (May 1957), a radical restructuring of the management of industry and construction of Leningrad was carried out. According to the resolution of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, the Leningrad Economic Administrative Region was created, uniting the industry of Leningrad, Leningrad, Novgorod and Pskov regions. The restructuring of industrial management was greeted by Leningraders with great satisfaction, because it makes it possible to better use internal production reserves and more correctly organize cooperation and specialization of enterprises.
At the head of the working people of Leningrad, who are successfully solving the problems of communist construction, is a proven and seasoned detachment of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - the Leningrad organization of the CPSU. As of January 1, 1957, the city party organization consisted of 20 district committees, 4,620 primary party organizations, 4,228 shop party organizations and 9,548 party groups. The number of members and candidates for membership of the CPSU amounted to 245,445 people.
On January 1, 1957, the Leningrad city Komsomol organization consisted of 344,913 members of the Komsomol. For heroism shown during the Great Patriotic War and active participation in socialist construction, the Leningrad Komsomol organization in 1948, on the 30th anniversary of the Komsomol, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. The Leningrad party organization is doing a great deal of work to implement the historical resolutions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Based on the decisions of the congress, a restructuring of party work was carried out, grassroots party organizations were strengthened, management of economic and cultural construction became more specific and efficient, and ideological work was intensified. Leningrad communists with great persistence are eliminating the consequences of the cult of personality condemned by the party. Based on the development of internal party democracy and adherence to Leninist norms of party life, the activity of communists increased significantly. The Leningrad party organization greeted with great satisfaction the measures taken by the CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet government to strengthen revolutionary legality. As it turned out in 1953, after the exposure and defeat of Beria’s criminal gang, in 1949 the so-called “Leningrad case”, in which a number of major party leaders were slandered and convicted (I. A. Voznesensky, A. A. Kuznetsov, Ya. F. Kapustin, P. S. Popkov, etc.), now completely rehabilitated. An attempt by the enemies of the party to defame the Leningrad cadres was thwarted.
The party organization of Leningrad has always been and remains a fighting monolithic detachment of the party, closely united around the Leninist Central Committee. The Leningrad communists demonstrated this again by unanimously approving the decision of the June plenum of the CPSU Central Committee (1957) on the anti-party group of Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov, which, with its factional activities, caused serious damage to the party and tried to push the party off the Leninist path, to change the party policy developed by the 20th Congress CPSU. In June 1957, the working people of Leningrad and the entire Soviet people celebrated the 250th anniversary of the founding of Leningrad with great enthusiasm.
In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Leningrad, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 16, 1957 established the medal “In memory of the 250th anniversary of Leningrad.” By Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 21, 1957, for the outstanding services of the working people of Leningrad to the Motherland, for the courage and heroism they showed during the days of the Great October Socialist Revolution and in the fight against the Nazi invaders in the Great Patriotic War, for the successes achieved in development of industry and culture, in the development and mastery of new technology, in connection with the 250th anniversary, Leningrad was awarded the Order of Lenin.
On June 22, 1957, the Anniversary session of the Leningrad City Council of Workers' Deputies, dedicated to the 250th anniversary of Leningrad, was held at the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater named after S. M. Kirov. At a session on behalf of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government, member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR A. A. Andreev in a solemn ceremony presented the Order of Lenin to the city bearing the glorious name of the leader of the proletarian revolution, the founder of the Communist Party and the world's first socialist state - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
For outstanding production achievements, the development of science and technology and the great contribution made to the development and implementation of new progressive labor methods at industrial enterprises, transport and construction sites in the city, 20 Leningrad residents were awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, 7226 workers, engineers and technicians, scientific and cultural workers , as well as trade union, party and Komsomol workers of Leningrad were awarded orders and medals (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of June 21).
On July 6, 1957, members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee arrived in Leningrad to present awards: N. A. Bulganin, K. E. Voroshilov, O. V. Kuusinen, E. A. Furtseva, N. S. Khrushchev, N. M. Shvernik, who spoke at meetings and rallies of teams of the largest factories.
On July 7, a 700,000-strong demonstration of city workers took place. It was a clear indication of the unity of the party and the people, the high political activity of Leningraders, and their combat readiness to fight under the Leninist banner for new victories of communist construction.
70 years have passed since that day. In the city itself there are now no more than 160 thousand people who took part in and witnessed those events. That’s why every memory is important. The staff of the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad set themselves the goal of collecting as many of them as possible. One of them is Irina Muravyova.
“Our archive contains several thousand diaries and letters from the time of the siege, as well as memories of those who lived in the city during the siege,” she says. – Sometimes relatives bring documents of their loved ones, as was the case with the diaries of teacher Klavdia Semenova. Her great-granddaughter found them. These are small notebooks. The entries are short, but day by day.”
For many years it was said that in besieged Leningrad only the Drama Theater and the Philharmonic were working...
Irina Muravyova: Even in the most difficult winter of 1941/42. There were several theaters in the city. In a newspaper poster dated January 4, 1942, theaters named after. Lensovet, Lenkom, Musical Comedy, Drama. Their evacuation began only in January - February 1942. During all 900 days of the siege, the theaters of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, the House of the Red Army, Youth Theater, Malaya Operetta, and Kamerny gave performances. And this also played a role, primarily psychological. People saw that life in the city goes on.
I know that you are also doing a lot of research work, establishing the biographical information of those whose documents ended up in your museum.
Irina Muravyova: By chance, Vladimir Ge’s notebook came to us. He kept notes in 1943. It would be strange, having presented in the exhibition the diary of an eyewitness to the siege, without saying anything about him. From the notebook, only the last name of the author of the notes was clear - Ge. Is he perhaps a relative of the famous Russian artist? The search lasted 5 years. Flipping through the pages once again, I noticed the word “manager”. I was hooked on him, because managers could only be in the bank back then. And so it happened. Vladimir Ge, the great-grandson of the artist Nikolai Ge, was there until the summer of 1941 as the secretary of the party organization. Gradually I established all the addresses where he lived during the war and after the war, found his daughter Tatyana, for whose sake he took up the diary (she is now 80 years old), as well as his granddaughter.
Sweet bitterness of the earth
Memoirs of Zinaida Pavlovna Ovcharenko (Kuznetsova).
She spent all 900 days of the siege in the city. During this time, I buried my father and grandmother, my brothers died at the front. She is now 85.
On June 22, 1941, I turned 13. That day I was walking around the city with a friend. We saw a crowd of people outside the store. There was a loudspeaker hanging there. The women were crying. We hurried home. At home we learned that the war had begun.
We had a family of 7 people: dad, mom, 3 brothers, 16-year-old sister and me, the youngest. On June 16, my sister set off on a ship along the Volga, where the war found her. The brothers volunteered to go to the front, dad was transferred to a barracks position in Lesnoy Port, where he worked as a mechanic. Mom and I were left alone.
We lived behind the Narva outpost, then it was a working outskirts. There are holiday villages and villages all around. When the Germans advanced, our entire street was clogged with refugees from the suburbs. They walked loaded with household belongings, carrying and leading their children by the hands.
I helped on duty in the sanitary squad, where my mother was the flight commander. Once I saw some kind of black cloud moving towards Leningrad from Srednyaya Rogatka. These were fascist planes. Our anti-aircraft guns began to fire at them. Several were knocked out. But others flew over the city center, and soon we saw large clouds of smoke nearby. Then we found out that it was the Badayevsky food warehouses that were bombed. They burned for several days. Sugar was also on fire. In the hungry winter of 1941/42, many Leningraders who had enough strength came there, collected this soil, boiled it and drank “sweet tea.” And when the earth was no longer sweet, they still dug it and ate it right away.
By winter, our dad was completely weak, but he still sent part of his labor rations to me. When my mother and I came to visit him, someone was being carried out of the door of the barracks into the carpentry workshop. It was our dad. We gave our ration of bread for 3 days to the women with my father’s work so that they could help my mother take it to the Volkovskoye cemetery - this is the other end of the city. These women, as soon as they ate the bread, abandoned their mother. She took dad to the cemetery alone. She walked with a sled after other people. I was exhausted. Sleighs loaded with the bodies of the dead were driven past. The driver allowed my mother to attach the sleigh with my father’s coffin to it. Mom fell behind. Arriving at the cemetery, I saw long ditches where the dead were placed, and just then dad was pulled out of the coffin, and the coffin was broken into firewood for the fire.
Lamp in the night
From the blockade diary of Claudia Andreevna Semenova.
She did not stop working throughout the 900 days of the blockade. She was a deeply religious person and was fond of music and theater. She died in 1972.
1942 March 29. At 6 am there was artillery shelling. At 7 o'clock the radio announced the all clear. I went to church. A lot of people. General confession. Communion of the Holy Mysteries. I came home at 11. Today is Palm Sunday. At 3.30 there is an alarm on the radio. Fighters. The anti-aircraft guns are “talking.” I feel tired, my right leg hurts. Where are my dears? I'm listening to a good program on the radio. Chilean song on ukulele, Lemeshev.
5th of April. Today is the Lord's Easter. At half past seven in the morning I went to church and attended mass. The day is sunny but cold. Anti-aircraft guns were firing now. Scary.
April 22. I'm an inpatient at the hospital. My leg is a little better. The food is tolerable. The main thing is to give butter (50 grams per day) and sugar - a portion for dystrophics. Of course, not enough. At night there was a strong cannonade. It's quiet during the day. Lethargy in people and in nature. It's hard to walk.
1st of May. Working day. There are few flags and no decorations on the streets. The sun is wonderful. The first time I went out without a scarf. After work I went to the theater. “Wedding in Malinovka.” The location was good. At half past eight at home. There was shelling.
the 6th of May. The alarm was at 5, and ended at half past six. It's a cold day. I took a ticket to the Philharmonic on May 10 for Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, conducted by Eliasberg.
May 17. At half past five, heavy shelling began, somewhere nearby. At 7 I was at the Philharmonic. Mikhailov sang well “Beloved city, native city, I’m with you again.”
"We will win!"
From the diary of Vladimir Ge.
During the war he served as political instructor of a cavalry squadron. After the war he taught at Leningrad universities. Died in 1981.
1943 July 22. Today marks 25 months since the great trials began. I am not able to cover events chronologically; I will make brief sketches. If you are not destined to use it yourself, let these lines remain a memory of me for my infinitely beloved daughter. She will grow up, read and understand how people lived and fought for her future happiness.
July 25. Yesterday Stalin signed an order for the failure of the German summer offensive. I think we will celebrate our victory next summer. The defeat of Germany is possible even this year if the Allies do land troops in Europe. But there was a time when many did not believe in our strength. I remember a conversation in August 1941 with Major T. in the command staff canteen in Pushkin. He knew me as a boy. He has been serving in the army for about 10 years. In a fatherly tone, patting me on the shoulder, he said: “Volodenka! Our situation with you is hopeless. Our troops are near Leningrad, there won’t even be anywhere to retreat. We are in a mousetrap. And doomed." In those days, many were rushing about: to evacuate the city or stay? Will the Germans break into the city or not?
August 19. Today I was at the cinema, the film “The Elusive Ian”. The shelling began. The walls shook from nearby explosions. But the audience sat quietly in the dark hall. We watched to the end. This is the life of Leningraders now: they go to the cinema, to the theaters, and somewhere nearby shells explode and people fall dead. At the same time, the work of enterprises and institutions does not stop. Where is the front, where is the rear? How to determine the line between heroism and carelessness? What is this - courage or habit? Each individual Leningrader did nothing to warrant being awarded the order, but all of them taken together certainly embody the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union.
4 September. In recent days, 10 cities in the Donbass have been liberated, and Taganrog has been taken. On August 23, I attended a jazz concert by Shulzhenko and Coralie. During the concert, the capture of Kharkov was announced. The audience applauded while standing. Shouts were heard: “Long live our Red Army!”, “Long live Comrade Stalin!”
31th of December. We have appointed a new army commander. He is short, stocky, speaks slowly, ponderously, apparently a strong-willed, tough person. This one will be stronger than its predecessor. His arrival reinforces the assumption that our army is destined for offensive operations of non-local significance.
1944, January 7. It looks like the city is living out the last months of the siege. I remember the general rejoicing of Leningraders when trams rumbled through the streets for the first time after a 5-month break. It was April 15, 1942. But today the tram has already become commonplace, and when you have to wait for it for more than 5 minutes, this causes dissatisfaction.
January 24. Our army took Peterhof, Krasnoye Selo, Strelna, Uritsk. One of these days we’ll take Pushkin and Gatchina. Our neighbors took MGU and Volkhov. A few more days - and Leningrad will be completely inaccessible to artillery shelling. Let's move forward. Perhaps today is the last time I see my city. The nomadic way of life begins...
Memoirs of Tamara Adamovna Lukk.
In 1945 - 13 years old. In 1953 (the year of Stalin's death) - 20 years. In 1964 (the year of Khrushchev's removal) - 32 years.
Question: Please tell us about the post-war years, how did your life turn out, how did you start your career?
Answer: I studied in Gorki until the fourth grade. I took exams for the 4th grade in Oslavye. She graduated from seven classes at Treskovitsky secondary school. In winter, we lived in Treskowice for weeks (first in private houses, then in a school dormitory), and from spring until early snow, 5-6 people walked along a forest road. In 1949, she graduated from seven classes and turned 16 years old. I went to Leningrad to enroll in an instrumental music college (mathematics was going well), but I didn’t succeed because my mother got sick. But it was necessary to enroll somewhere. In Vyborg, a one-year school “accountant-accountant” according to the dual system, of union importance. Classes began on October 1, and I studied for a year. In Vyborg we were sent to practice in villages. We were careful not to walk around in the dark, because Finns often came to their former homes and left with the words - we will come back. By that time they had all been evicted and the population was mainly from Vologda.
In 1950 she joined the Komsomol there. When I returned, I didn’t tell anyone and didn’t register. But later my husband and I discussed and approved the children’s joining the Komsomol and the party, believing that this gives responsibility to a person. Neither I nor my husband were members of the party, but due to work I was offered to join more than once. All our shepherds were party members.
She started working as an accountant on her collective farm and worked until she got married. The collective farm was very modest. Payment was made in workdays, so the collective farm kept huge records. For example, it cost three workdays to mow a specific field. It could be mowed in a day, earning these three workdays. At the end of the year, the amount of workdays was accumulated. For each one you could get something. For example, 5 grams of honey, 3 grams of wool. During the first year I accumulated 800 workdays (including studies). Based on the results of the collective farm’s work, the cost of one workday was estimated, depending on how the collective farm worked. In 1950, on our collective farm it cost 5 kopecks, and at the end of the year I received 160 rubles for 800 workdays. In 1954, already in Treskovitsy, on the wealthy collective farm “Sturm”, a workday cost 10 rubles.
Question: Did you have a chance to leave the village during these years and why?
Answer: I went to Leningrad every week to the market to sell milk, butter, and sour cream. This is what they lived for. In 1946, I often went to Narva to buy bread; there was nowhere to buy it here. There were no entire houses left in Narva; they lived in basements. Leningrad was also very much destroyed.
Question: Did you pay taxes?
Answer: The tax was paid on everything: for a cow, for an apple tree, for cattle, for land... Two kilos of wool, a kilo of butter, some eggs. Whether you have chickens or not, you will hand over the eggs. Reception centers were in Volosovo. I won’t say how it is in the city, but in Volosovo we had everything in stores. There was no money.
Question: What did you feed the cattle?
Answer: The pig was fed grass, grain, and potatoes. Nowadays they imagine it, but here we grew everything ourselves. Flax was sown.
Question: Was there medical care after the war?
Answer: Medicine after the war was better than now. Then hospitals opened, now they are closed. Today, in order to get to the hospital, I need to get a referral at the outpatient clinic. The outpatient clinic in Bolshaya Vruda works according to a schedule, there are practically no buses, then to Volosovo. It became very bad.
Question: Did they drink a lot of alcohol in the village and were there any slackers?
Answer: We didn’t drink at all - it’s a Finnish village. Well, maybe somewhere, someone, but I don't know. They brewed beer, yes. There were probably lazy people, like everywhere else, but not particularly. And not because of the vodka. Nothing like what they are like now. Women had no fashion at all. Once a year, when everything was harvested, for the “harvest festival” the women brewed some kind of intoxicating kvass, or maybe some similar drink. I don’t remember moonshine at all. But there were no men in our house... They brewed beer. Mom especially did well. It was not mash, it was a different mash - potassium in Finnish. There was always a barrel of kvass.
Question: When did electricity appear?
Answer: For us, ordinary people, electricity appeared in 1957. Before that, electricity was supplied from a diesel engine that worked at the lime plant, but not to everyone, only to the plant workers, to the school, the village council, and to the water tower. Ordinary people used kerosene lamps for lighting. Kerosene was on sale. With the advent of electricity things became very good.
Question: Where did you get the water?
Answer: There were three wells in the village, we took water from the nearest one “on Fedotka”. It took about 40 minutes to bring two buckets. Later, a wooden water tower appeared to supply the farm, but they gave us water reluctantly.
Question: Your native language is Finnish, your husband’s is Estonian. Why didn't you teach your children these languages?
Answer: How to teach them? I speak Estonian poorly, my husband speaks Finnish poorly. From the first day, our common language was only Russian. And in the village where I got married they spoke only Russian. My husband's family returned from Estonia after the war much earlier than us. They rode there on a horse (near Tartu), and returned on it, without waiting for the train to form. By that time, there was nothing left of their Tarasino, everything burned down. In Volosovo, at the district executive committee, they received a direction to Treskovitsy, there were empty houses, they ordered timber for the construction of a new house, they handed over the horse and all the harness. We lined up quickly. In 1954 we got married and both ended up in a Russian-speaking village.
Question: It is known that farmstead farming was typical in the area, how did it happen that there were no farmsteads left?
Answer: I don’t know about the liquidation of farms, this happened before me, in the early 30s. I know that Estonians lived on farms, Finns lived in villages. Today, farms are called places where people once either lived or had buildings, or this place is somehow different from the rest.
Question: What was the situation with education in the post-war years? Was it possible to graduate from college after a village school?
Answer: It’s possible and we graduated from many institutes. There were schools everywhere. My brother, for example, completed junior high school in the village, then 10 grades in Volosovo, entered a military school and finished his service as a colonel. And he's not the only one.
Question: How did you greet the news of Stalin's death? And how did people in your circle feel about Soviet power?
Answer: It was like this. In the morning we have breakfast with my friend, I tell her that I had an amazing dream that Stalin died and he was lying in the hall of columns (I still don’t know what a hall of columns is). Before I had time to finish, a citizen came in, decided on some work related matters and said: “By the way! Do you know that Stalin died?” No one tore our hair out, but others said that they cried and roared. They treated the Soviet regime normally, accepted it as it was. Mom didn't like Stalin. Lenin, she said, was an intellectual, and Stalin was a posad. We didn't grieve. They were grieving that March 8 was just around the corner, and all events were cancelled.
Question: There are two children in your family, and eight in your parents’ family, which is typical for that time. Was it typical in your time to have small families?
Answer: There are two children, not because there is no way to feed them, but I don’t know how. Looking around, everyone had two, three, one child.
Recorded April 2012.
The day of Tamara Adamovna’s funeral was the first spring day of 2013, with cumulus clouds that only happen in summer..
Leningrad survived a terrible siege, famine, and bombings. People waited for the end of the war, but in the end the coming peace brought new challenges. The city was in ruins, poverty, devastation and rampant street crime were everywhere: gangs and lone killers appeared. the site recalls the most notorious crimes in Leningrad in the post-war years.
Crime curve
In the post-war years, there was almost no hunting for jewelry and money; they stole mainly clothes and food. Leningrad was overflowing with dubious elements and people desperate from poverty.
The townspeople no longer died from dystrophy, but most of them continued to experience a constant feeling of hunger. For example, workers in 1945-46 received 700 grams of bread per day, employees - 500 grams, and dependents and children - only 300 grams. There were plenty of products on the “black market,” but they were inaccessible to an ordinary St. Petersburg family with a modest budget.
The crop failure of 1946 further aggravated the situation. It is not surprising that the crime curve in Leningrad was rapidly creeping up. Lone robbers and organized gangs operated in all areas of the city. Robberies of food stores, shops, and apartments followed one after another, and there were armed attacks on the streets, in courtyards, and entrances. After the war, the bandits had a huge amount of firearms in their hands; it was not difficult to find and obtain them at the sites of recent battles. In just the fourth quarter of 1946, more than 85 assaults and armed robberies, 20 murders, 315 cases of hooliganism, and almost 4 thousand thefts of all types were committed in the city. These figures were considered very high at the time.
It should be taken into account that among the bandits there were many participants in the war. At the front, they learned to shoot and kill, and therefore, without hesitation, they solved problems with the help of weapons. For example, in one of the Leningrad cinemas, when spectators remarked on a company smoking and talking loudly, shots were fired. A policeman was killed and several visitors were injured.
Criminals from the criminal environment even followed a peculiar fashion - they wore metal retainers on their teeth and caps pulled low on their foreheads. When Leningraders saw a gang of such young people approaching them, the first thing they did was tightly clutch their food cards. The bandits snatched the treasured pieces of paper on the fly, sometimes leaving the entire family to live from hand to mouth for a month.
Law enforcement officials tried to stem the crime wave. The detection rate was approximately 75%.
Black Cat Gang
However, not only criminal gangs operated in the poor, dilapidated city. Some officials who understood how to benefit from their power also carried out criminal activities. Evacuees were returning to the city on the Neva; questions of housing distribution, return of property, etc. arose. Dishonest businessmen also used the available information to determine which valuables were poorly protected.
In 1947, 24 unique items made of gold and precious stones were stolen from the Hermitage storerooms. The thief was found and convicted, and the valuables were returned.
That same year, a large gang was exposed, which included criminals and officials from the city prosecutor's office, court, bar, city housing department, and police. For bribes, they released people from custody, stopped investigative cases, illegally registered people, and released them from conscription.
Another case: the head of the motor transport department of the Leningrad City Council sent trucks to the occupied regions of Germany, allegedly for equipment. In fact, he took valuables and materials out of there and built dachas here.
Teenagers often became participants in criminal communities. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
The famous “Black Cat” gang, which became known to many thanks to the film “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed,” was in fact a huge criminal community. She carried out her main activities in Moscow, but traces of her were also found in the city on the Neva.
In 1945, Leningrad police officers solved a high-profile case. An investigation into a series of burglaries in house No. 8 on Pushkinskaya Street led to the trail of a teenage gang. They caught the top of the gang red-handed - students of vocational school No. 4 Vladimir Popov, nicknamed Chesnok, Sergei Ivanov and Grigory Shneiderman. During the search, the leader, 16-year-old Popov, was found to have a most interesting document - the “Black Cat” oath of the Caudla, under which eight signatures were affixed in blood. But since only three participants managed to commit crimes, they went to the dock. In January 1946, at a meeting of the people's court of the 2nd section of the Krasnogvardeisky district of Leningrad, the verdict was announced: the teenagers received from one to three years in prison.
Night hunters
Organized crime was also widespread. Moreover, gangs were often made up not of criminals, but of ordinary citizens. During the day these were ordinary workers of Leningrad enterprises, and at night...
Thus, a gang of Glaz brothers operated in the city. It was a real organized crime community. The gang was led by brothers Isaac and Ilya Glaz, it consisted of 28 people and was armed with two Schmeisser machine guns, six TT pistols, eighteen grenades, as well as a passenger car, in which the bandits carried out reconnaissance of future crime scenes and bypass routes, and a truck... In a short time, from the autumn of 1945 to March 1946, the gang committed 18 robberies, using the tactics of night raids. The area of operation of this criminal group included the Nevsky, Kalininsky, Moskovsky and Kirovsky districts of the city. The scope of the gang’s activities can be judged by the fact that the distribution system for the loot covered the markets of Kharkov and Rostov!
The Eye Brothers gang had a whole arsenal. They were armed with two Schmeisser machine guns, six TT pistols, eighteen grenades and other weapons Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
The operation to defeat the gang was developed in March 1946 by criminal intelligence operative and former front-line soldier Vladimir Boldyrev. The security forces set up ambushes in places where further robberies were likely to take place. As a result, during an attack on a store on Volkovsky Prospekt, the criminals were blocked and detained. The operation was carried out in such a way that not a single shot was fired. In 28 apartments, 150 rolls of woolen fabrics, 28 rolls of cloth, 46 rolls of silk fabric, 732 headscarves and 85 thousand rubles were seized from relatives and friends of the criminals! A distinctive feature of the activities of this gang was that its leaders managed to establish close relationships with some influential employees of the state apparatus of Leningrad and the region. To bribe them, the bandits even allocated a special fund in the amount of 60 thousand rubles.
Despite serious efforts to reform the Leningrad Criminal Investigation Department, crime receded slowly. It could not have been otherwise, because its main causes - post-war devastation, the difficult economic situation of the population - changed slowly.
However, in the period from 1946 to 1950, the Leningrad City Court considered 37 cases on charges of banditry, for which 147 people were convicted.
None of us expected war. On June 22, 1941, in the school cafeteria, during breakfast, we silently listened to Molotov’s speech on the radio, and three days later, already in the uniform of an officer and with the rank of lieutenant engineer, I left for Moscow to proceed to my duty station in Vladivostok. Vladivostok was not a new city for me; in 1939 I did an internship there.I accepted the M-14 submarine. It was a small ship with a crew of twelve people and two torpedo tubes on the bow. The displacement of the boat is 240 tons. I had already sailed on these submarines before, but in order to fight on it, I had to remember in detail the structure of the boat and everything connected with its control.
I sailed on the M-14 for about three years. Positional service, coastal protection and escort of caravans coming from the USA with cargo for our country - that was our job.
Later I was transferred to the submarine Shch-133. It was a medium-sized ship with six torpedo tubes (four in the bow and two in the stern), with a crew of 36 people. Displacement - about 700 tons. On this submarine I took part in hostilities against Japan and was awarded the Order of the Red Star. In 1945, saying goodbye to the crew of the boat, the commander of the Shchuka, Vladislav Garvalinsky, raised his glass and said very pleasant words to me: “My toast is to the best submarine engineer of the Pacific Fleet, Boris Gribanov!..”
After the end of the war, I handed over the Shch-133 for repairs in Vladivostok, accepted the brand new S-52 submarine and went to Port Arthur on it. I sailed on all these ships as a mechanical engineer.
In 1947, I was appointed head of the Ship Survivability Laboratory at the Naval School, from which I graduated, and I arrived at a new duty station - I returned to Leningrad.
After the submarine, serving as the head of a laboratory seemed like paradise to me. The window of my small office on the first floor of the Admiralty looked out onto the greenery of the Alexander Garden. The silence, which I was completely unaccustomed to on ships, was broken only by telephone calls. At ten in the morning the cleaning lady brought fresh newspapers, at twelve - lunch in the school wardroom and at six in the evening - the end of work. While still a cadet, at a dance I met Clara Schmidt, who was then finishing her tenth year. We dated for more than a year, and then Clara became my wife. A year after the start of the war, Clara came to see me in Vladivostok. We were given an apartment, and our family life began. Both of our daughters were born there, in Vladivostok - Tatyana in 1943, and Olga two years later.
Now I came home every day at half past six in the evening - gone were the days when I sailed on submarines and did not appear at home for weeks. And if he did show up, he didn’t sleep peacefully for a single night, because something was always happening on the boat: either it was being repaired, or getting ready for a trip, or something broke on it, or one of my sailors got drunk, or the batteries were being charged, or there was an urgent need to take measurements of fuel availability and conduct a night check...
For the first time in many years, I had free time - I was not used to it: all the years I was spinning like a squirrel in a wheel, knowing neither peace nor rest.
Post-war Leningrad looked gloomy: the paint on the houses was peeling, it was felt that the city had suffered the difficult days of the siege. However, the restoration of the city proceeded quickly, the facades of houses were repaired and painted, destroyed buildings were restored, public transport was improved, hotels and restaurants were opened, and many pubs and eateries appeared.
The cultural life of the city gradually revived - announcements appeared about exhibitions of paintings from museum storerooms and private collections. On Sundays, lectures on Russian painting began to be given at the Russian Museum. I started going to lectures, started buying art books, visiting exhibitions and talking to collectors.
I began to take a closer look at the art trade in the city. There were many consignment shops selling paintings. The paintings were often accepted for commission and sold by completely incompetent people. In consignment stores that sold furniture, for example, they also accepted paintings, and their artistic merits were assessed by... furniture makers who, of course, understood nothing about painting.
Of all the painting acceptors whom I recognized, only two knew anything about painting: Vladimir Shibanov from the thrift store at 7 Nevsky Prospekt and Vasily Frolov from the store at 102 on the same street. There, paintings were assessed and sold on the second floor gallery - on the first floor they sold ready-made clothes, furs and objects of applied art. We called this store "gallery".
The store where Shibanov worked was located next to the Admiralty building and my laboratory. Returning from work, I visited him almost every evening, and that’s how I met Shibanov. It turned out that Vladimir was also a naval sailor who served in Kronstadt throughout the war. We quickly found a common language with him and became friends. Subsequently, our wives met, and we became family friends. His father, a fairly famous artist and collector Alexander Georgievich Shibanov, became famous for depicting Pushkin’s places in painting. Vladimir introduced me to him. I really liked the relationship between father and son Shibanov. When the father looked at his son in the store, Vladimir always approached him and kissed him on the cheek, despite the presence of customers. He treated his father with great respect. The elder sometimes grumbled at the younger because Vladimir drank alcohol too often - a Kronstadt maritime habit.
Vladimir, in my opinion, was the most knowledgeable person in painting among those who sold paintings in Leningrad. At home he had a small reference library on painting. Vladimir received a lot of knowledge from his father, who was well versed in the Russian and Western schools of painting. His father had a good collection of paintings, so Vladimir grew up among works of art, in the society of collectors and artists. His father collected paintings mainly of the Western school, and was very fond of the British and French. Vladimir himself also collected paintings, but somehow sluggishly, without enthusiasm, carelessly - he simply acquired things that touched him in some way. He had paintings from different times and movements, but each had some kind of zest that touched him. He always eagerly explained what he saw as this “zest” and why he purchased the painting. Shibanov parted with his paintings without much pain and quickly found solace in new ones.
After the war, there were many art collectors in Leningrad. Most of them assembled a Russian school, and only a few people - a Western one. Western painting was several times cheaper than Russian painting. A good 17th-century Dutchman on a board could be purchased for 300-400 rubles. The most expensive were the works of Aivazovsky and Levitan, and Shishkin was also not cheap. In Moscow, paintings were valued at almost twice as much as in Leningrad.
Collectors of Russian painting were divided into two camps: some collected realists, that is, the Wanderers, academicians and democrats of the sixties, others - the so-called “leftists”, that is, the groups of the “World of Arts”, “Jack of Diamonds” and “Donkey’s Tail”.
In the first post-war years, as far as I know, no one actively collected abstractionists in Leningrad, but there was interest in them. The pursuit of their works began later, when our scientists and diplomats, having visited Europe, realized what kind of art this was and what importance the whole world attached to it.
In addition, negative statements from our press about Russian left-wing artists and abstractionists eventually aroused interest in these masters among collectors and artists, and our intelligentsia began to seriously pay attention to “left-wing” artists. Those who have been abroad were struck by the high prices for the works of some Russian artists who emigrated abroad during the revolution and became famous there. They paid a lot of money for these paintings - thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. For us they cost practically nothing...
The first collectors of abstract art were several professors of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. Western painting in Leningrad was collected by Academician Razdolsky, Professor Lozhkin, Professor Zhdanov and others. I became acquainted with the collection of Dmitry Arkadyevich Zhdanov after I moved to Moscow, in 1962. He had a very impressive collection of Western masters.
And in Leningrad in 1947-1948, I became acquainted with all the prominent collectors and knew approximately who loved what and who breathed what.
