God's people in besieged Leningrad
Vivid childhood impressions, sounds, smells come back to me. I was seven when the war began and my childhood ended. Most often I remember winter—probably the two winters of ’41 and ’42 blend into one very long and cruel winter. For some reason the cold stays with me more sharply than the hunger.
A narrow little path between snowdrifts and some sort of piles (uncleared bodies frozen into the ice?), where you had to walk very carefully, stepping into the same footprints, so your felt boots wouldn’t sink into the snow. The frost, the bitter frost! The long trek to the ice hole on the Neva—from Kirpichny Lane, across Palace Square. Anger, silent tears—there was no strength to cry loudly, and anyway all of us during the blockade grew very quiet, little old-man, old-woman wraiths. The pots and pans on the sled kept tipping over, so we’d have to go back.
Into the queue. The queue! That was something especially dreadful, hopeless—the fear of waiting. What if they didn’t bring the bread? What if they said, “You weren’t standing here”? They might snatch your ration cards away. The shop assistant would cut off the next coupon ahead of time. It seemed there was nothing and no one more terrifying and powerful than the shop assistant. She could do anything.
At home (if you could call a tiny, dark, coffin-like room without a window a home)—a little tin stove, with us always hunting for something to burn in it, and my sick mother lying in an ice-cold bed.
Mama, I remember, would get angry and hit us with towels to make us take the sled and go for water. Maybe there was enough water anyway? But we had to keep moving, and we didn’t want to move at all. We wanted to lie down and quietly fall asleep. People died quietly.
Nowadays a great deal is written about the blockade, things we didn’t know then. About cannibalism, looters, negligent officials who left all the food supplies at the burned‑out Badayev warehouses. Or about those who mindlessly routed trains carrying evacuated children—straight towards Hitler’s army, and the children were shot at from low-flying planes, as if for sport…
But little is written about how people during the war, during the blockade, began to pray to the living God, how they copied out and memorized Psalm 90 and sewed it into little pouches worn around the neck. And not only did they pray, as if raking up dead coals to blow on the dying spark of their former faith, but they also lived according to God’s laws. And the one who survived, contrary to all human logic, was precisely the one who lived in a godly way, who loved his neighbor more than himself, who sacrificed everything.
About ten years ago the then presbyter of our church on Poklonnaya, P. B. Konovalchik, asked me, as a journalist, to visit those church members who had been baptized in the 1920s and 1930s, had survived the blockade, and had remained faithful to the Lord.
It was hard to talk with them. Recalling what they had lived through is no light thing, and it is impossible to describe all that was going on in the city—a huge city left without food, light, heating, sewage, without transport—without anything. The thin thread across the Road of Life, across Ladoga (where my father, a foundations and groundworks specialist, worked throughout the blockade), kept breaking and then being restored…
And our Soviet people, who had lived through Stalin’s time, denunciations, camps, reacted painfully to a person with a notebook. And yet, as a rule, I left the homes of our blockade survivors with my spirit lifted, accompanied by a prayer of blessing and by love. Our Lord lives! People saw that the sufferings they were allowed to endure had meaning…
Here are a few excerpts from my notes. I do not mention surnames. Their names are known to the Lord.
“The cold kept us awake at night. We waited for dawn so we could go and queue for bread. My mother and I read the Bible at night. Lying on our backs with our knees bent, we made a sort of tent under a mountain of blankets and coats. We would bring in a tiny oil lamp and take turns reading aloud. The lamp kept going out from our breathing, from turning the pages. To relight it we had to pull our hands out from under the blankets, which was very hard—we had to warm up all over again, and we were so weak, there was no warmth left in us. But the power of the Bible, the power of the Word of God, is something I truly came to understand during those long blockade nights. The revelations were so mighty; my spirit rejoiced in communion with God.”
“By the start of the war I had five children. I lived on the Okhta, by the Neva. After the bombing, stunned fish floated to the surface, and I learned to catch them. God blessed us in everything, gave us strength to work at the factory, to labour in the vegetable garden, to help everyone. In the morning a large cast‑iron pot of boiled vegetables was prepared, so that every person who came could be fed something hot. My heart was open to all who were in need, and in that we found great joy.”
“My husband went to the front. I worked as a cleaner in a shop and locked the children at home with a key—children were hunted by cannibals on the streets. In the terrible, hungry April of 1942 I lost all my ration cards, but the Lord did not abandon me. The shop manager cut a little piece from a loaf spoiled by rats for me every day.”
“We divided the bread into tiny portions; the hardest thing was to hold out and not eat a piece before it was time. We dried the bread to make it more filling, so we wouldn’t crave fresh, soft bread so much! Before eating a piece of bread, we always prayed together with the children, thanked God, and asked His blessing on the whole day dedicated to searching for food. I went around the rubbish heaps looking for bones; when I found one it was a feast—we crushed the bone and boiled it for hours. We dug icy cabbage stalks and plantain roots out from under the snow. There was no fear of death, and by then everyone in the blockade had grown used to death. Once I lost my purse with all my ration cards. I prayed fervently, inwardly prepared to die together with the children. I was walking back from the shop—and suddenly I saw my purse lying on the path! Right there on the road I fell to my knees. ‘…I have commanded to feed you there,’ said the Lord (1 Kings 17:4).”
“In my garden back then, during the blockade, very large vegetables grew—I had never seen such large carrots in my life, and we took this miracle as God’s love and care for all people. I shared with everyone. I knew that if I stopped sharing, the potatoes would not grow.”
“Father collapsed on the stairs; he came to in the bakery where a stranger girl had dragged him. They gave him a glass of boiling water there, and he revived. This struck him so deeply that he began to pray, though earlier he had risen up against God and against us. He died of hunger, but he was fully reconciled with the Lord.”
“Before the war my husband was a normal, kind person. We prayed together. During the blockade something happened to him. He would obtain food and lock it away in a special chest with several locks. When he ate, he gave nothing to anyone; the children crawled on the floor picking up crumbs, and he seemed not to notice them. He was taken to the front, where he soon perished. Did he repent before the Lord? My children and I remained alive.”
“Lessons of the blockade” are hard to teach in today’s schools. How do you explain to children sated with Snickers, video games, and chewing gum what the precious blockade bread was like—so much glue, cellulose, everything but the smell of flour…
Everyone asks us to tell something especially horrifying or heroic. Yet the true heroism was ordinary everyday life—getting up, getting dressed, washing, remaining human, not turning into a beast. Giving your last to another, “casting bread upon the waters,” and doing so naturally, without a second thought. Thanking God with all your heart for what is, by our standards, infinitesimally small and yet immeasurably great. Like manna in the wilderness—for each day.
Many elderly believers, former survivors of the siege, spoke of how the wartime trials helped them wake up and renew their hope in God and God alone. Repressions, the scattering of the church, and militant atheism had cooled the first love in many. Yet something else is also known: how many people turned to the Lord for the first time in their lives during the war. How many mass baptisms took place after the war, when Evangelical churches were opened again! The “dry” bones came to life…
There are also purely practical, everyday lessons from the blockade. Endurance. The habit of not whining, not complaining, not inflaming oneself with empty daydreams, being unpretentious in food, content with little, and much more.
It is impossible to comprehend and imagine what my parents had to go through. What it means not to be able to wash, to do laundry, to feed the children… And how powerful my mother’s morning prayer was: each day she said goodbye to us as we set off under bombing, shelling, and fires. We could have encountered bandits and much else. My sister and I saw only my mother’s calm face and gentle gaze, as if nothing at all were happening.
A despondent spirit dries up the bones. Her neat appearance, her snow-white blouse—what that cost! It is impossible to pretend. Inner light, the power of faith, the ability to love—both neighbors and strangers—are given only by the Lord.
…The siren wails, the alarm sounds. The metronome beats unhurriedly. A dead, snow-covered city. No birds, no dogs, no cats. Only huge, insolent man-eating rats. The acrid smell of fires. Figures of people wrapped in rags. Little sledges…
“And some of those of understanding shall fall, to test them, to purify, and to make them white, until the time of the end…” (Dan. 11:35).
Lord, humanity today lives in anxiety, in fear of the coming calamities. You are our refuge and shield.
Olga Kolesova
Related articles
- Priest Smirnov called on the Russian president to jail sectarians, and the people of Russia to “smash the foul sect” — “these freaks” May 6, 2012, the day before the inauguration of Russian President Vladimir Putin for a third term…
- V. Franchuk. The Man of God Panteley Dubinin At the end of May 1988, when the final preparations were being made for the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’ (with…
- Murder, Retribution, or God’s Judgment on the founder of the AUCECB and the Moscow Patriarchate Lavrenty Beria Beria’s wife: She stood and furiously crossed herself. I describe only what I saw with my own eyes. Only…
- God’s Judgment on Benny Hinn God’s judgment on a false teacher pronouncing puffed-up empty words — “pastor” Benny Hinn. In the summer of 2009 he…
- Conference in Sacramento “The Future of Slavic Immigration” On May 5, 2012, a conference was held in Sacramento, California on the topic “The Future…
- From the reports of the 4th department of the 5th directorate of the KGB of the USSR: Fighters of the invisible front — priests of registered churches in the service of the interests of the godless authorities. A vivid example is Patriarch V.M. Gundyaev. Their name was: “Legion” Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev was born on November 20, 1946 in Leningrad to a priest’s family and…
- Executioners and victims. The archives speak! Stalin’s personal chauffeur Yakovlev wrote in a report: It is good and easy to work with sectarians. These…
- Christian apologist Anatoly Yudenko: An analytical article in defense of Voronaev. Who said that Voronaev was wrong? The true understanding of being born from above, as a birth from heaven,…
- Vladimir Stepanov. Keep the faith and the faith will keep you “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice…
- A brief history of the AUCECB — the brotherhood of Evangelical Christians “God, who commanded light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God…
- The story of believers who hid in the basement of the US Embassy in Moscow An article by Lev Simkin about believers who hid in the basement of the American embassy in Moscow in…