New Eastern Europe Issue 1

Ewa Ziółkowska, They All Perished, only Tanya Survived History 143
time, bombs rained down on the city along with artillery shells. Th e sewage and
water supply systems were dysfunctional. Death was the only thing left, and that
was abundant. Death became something common, an everyday incident. It often
seemed to be the only salvation.
In these conditions, “the citizens of Leningrad had to go to factories, to work,
to keep guard on roofs, to save equipment, homes, their closest relatives, children,
fathers, husbands, wives, to supply the front, to look after the wounded, to put out
fi res, to get fuel, to carry water, food, missiles, to build shelters, and to camoufl age
buildings”.
Th e truth about the tragedy of Leningrad and, above all, about the enormity of
the losses was carefully hidden by the Soviet authorities for years. Suffi ce to say,
the Museum of the Defence and Siege of Leningrad, made available to the public
in 1946, was closed after three years and most of the exhibits were destroyed. With
the wave of perestroika in 1989, it was reopened on Solyanoy Pereulok. For the
same reasons the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery, which is a visible symbol
of the suff erings of the citizens of the city, was made ready only several years after
the war, while, the fi rst renovated halls of the State Hermitage Museum could be
visited as early as autumn 1944.
Here lie the citizens of Leningrad
Th e living citizens had neither the strength nor the possibility to bury the dead.
Since the middle of December 1941, corpses had been dumped in cemeteries on
a massive scale. In January 1942, they were more and more often left on staircases,
in courtyards, streets, or in abandoned fl ats. Th e municipal services could not
keep up the pace with burying the thousands of bodies. Th e local anti-aircraft
defence units and NKVD were ordered to see to the burials. Th ose who worked
in the cemeteries had the status of frontline soldiers. Th ey received more bread
and a ration of vodka. Th e victims of the blockade were buried around the city,
including the Volkovskoye Cemetery, the Chesmenskoye Cemetery and the Serafi
movskoye Cemetery. Space in the cemeteries quickly ran out and offi cials decided
to arrange mass burials on the north-eastern outskirts of the city, near the
Piskaryovskoye train station.
In this nearby small rural cemetery, graves of the Red Army soldiers who had
died in the Soviet-Finnish war fi rst appeared in 1939. During the siege of Leningrad,
the Piskaryovskoye cemetery became the main burial ground for local people
and unknown soldiers. No systematic records were kept. According to offi cial
data, more than 42,000 civilians and 70,000 soldiers were buried in 433 trench
graves. In the winter, when the ground was frozen solid, graves were not dug but