For those of you expecting one of my usual lighthearted, sardonic posts, you might want to go back and reread your favorite instead of reading this one. It's kind of a downer. I'm fine, it's just the subject matter isn't really something I feel comfortable cracking jokes about. Which is saying a lot, if you know anything about me and my sense of humor.
Today, we (Corinne, Alexandra, Brenda, and I) had an interactive history lesson about the Leningrad blockade of 1941-1944. I dimly recall Mr. Crile mentioning the siege of Leningrad once or twice in IB American History senior year, so I was aware that this event occurred, but you just don't appreciate the scale of something like that until you visit the city itself. It is a powerful story of human perseverance in the face of profound tragedy; there is a monument, erected in 1966, not far from the heart of St. Petersburg memorializing the struggle, and it is one of very few sites bearing Communist images, symbols and rhetoric in the city, a block or so south of the infamous statue of Lenin pointing westward on Moscow Square. That one was preserved because it has artistic and historical merit. This monument stands because the memory is that important.
On September 8, 1941, Hitler's invading troops surrounded the city. The strategy for Leningrad was a war of attrition, rather than attacking the city outright. To that end, the Nazis blockaded Leningrad and destroyed the food supply. Then they started printing up invitations to their victory banquet at the Hotel Astoria in the heart of downtown, across the square from the then-German Consulate, believing that the city would surrender within weeks. The hotel is only seven miles from the front, and the Nazis never reached it.
The city was under siege for 900 days (until January 27, 1944). It began in September, and the city's supply of oil and coal ran out within weeks, just as winter began. There was no electricity, no central heating, no running water. Food was strictly rationed; within two months, the rations were cut to 1/3 the daily requirements for an adult. By February 1942, bread rations were down to a mere 125 grams, or 1/4 pound, per person per day. Infants were the first to die, as their mothers were too malnourished to produce milk to feed them. In 900 days, it is estimated that one million civilians died. 95% succumbed to starvation and exposure; the rest were killed as a direct result of artillery fire. More people were buried every day of the siege--about 4,000 people per day--than died in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks (about 3,000). Cats, rats, pigeons, horses, dogs, and crows were all eaten over the course of the siege, because 125 grams of cellulose-bread cannot sustain anyone for long. No cats survived the blockade; after it was over, a truckload of two hundred cats was brought in and released into the city, because what is a city without cats?
Tens of thousands of people were dead by the end of 1941, but because it was winter, it was impossible to bury them. Bodies piled up in the streets; there were people whose job it was to find corpses and take them to holding centers until the ground thawed enough to bury them. As the siege went on and more and more people died, people would bring the bodies of their loved ones that had died at home to a designated collection spot, where they were loaded onto trucks and taken closer to the front. They used bombs to break through the frozen ground and tossed the bodies into mass graves. They did the same for soldiers; it is estimated that 1.5 million soldiers died defending the city from the Nazis. 500,000 people are buried at the Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery, civilians alongside soldiers, and almost all of them anonymously, in mass graves. At first people were buried individually, but very quickly there were too many dead for those tasked with digging graves to keep up. Some people, knowing they were not long for this world, would go to the cemetery and sit there, just waiting for their bodies to finally give up; at least, that way, they knew they would be buried.
But even in the face of such crippling hardship, the city worked on. The war industries continued to produce artillery and armaments; many factories had workforces made entirely of women, children, and the elderly, because all able-bodied men had been conscripted to fight at the front. The city was not immediately evacuated, because, Stalin reasoned, the soldiers would fight harder and would not retreat if they knew their mothers, wives, sisters, and children were behind them. The logic was sound, I suppose, because ultimately it worked.
The arts also survived the siege; the Philharmonic was active, and the troupe from the neighboring Comedy Theater, although they could not use their own facility, performed comedies on the stage of the Philharmonic for the people. It was during the siege that Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 7, also known as the Leningrad Symphony. New seasons at the Philharmonic still open in the fall with a performance of that piece, an impressive work on its own that is only magnified by the fact that it was produced under such circumstances. Here's the first movement on Youtube. The memorial I mentioned at the beginning of this post has a museum under it, and among the articles preserved there is a violin belonging to Shostakovich.
In that museum is also a small, unassuming notepad. This pad of paper was the diary of a young girl named Tanya Savicheva. She and her family aided the war effort; among Tanya's responsibilities were digging trenches and disarming firebombs, work undertaken chiefly by young women and girls. During air raids, it was their job to don helmets, grab fire axes and special tongs, and head up to the roofs of the buildings to grab and neutralize so-called "residual bombs" or "firebombs" before they went off. Many women died doing this. Tanya managed to survive that job, however; her record lists the dates and times of German air raids, as well as a log of when and how each of her family members died over a span of about 4 months in 1941-1942. First her sister Zhenya, then her grandmother, followed by her brother Leka, then Uncle Vasya, Uncle Lyosha, and finally her mother. The final page of her diary reads "All the Saviches are dead. Only Tanya remains." She lived long enough to be found by clean-up crews checking apartments for bodies, but succumbed to tuberculosis at age 14. Her diary was used as evidence during the Nuremburg Trials. Sergei, our tour guide, told us this story; we didn't have enough time to look at all of the things in that museum, but I'm not sure anything else would have stood out to me quite as strongly.
We also visited a memorial to the civilian, volunteer militia that worked to defend the city, situated at the very front itself; a small river (right now it's not much more than a creek) marks the boundary, and there are anti-tank obstacles adorning the site with iron plates bolted to them. The plates have the names of regiments, squads, and battalions of these civilian corps on them. It was eerie.
Our final stop for the day was at the previously-mentioned Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery. There is a small information center by the entrance; among the things in that room is a slideshow of photographs. These photographs show locations in and around modern-day St. Petersburg, overlaid by photos of Leningrad during the siege in the same location. It is one thing to merely be told all of these things about what is certainly still a huge event in the cultural memory of the city; it's quite another to see photographs of places you walk through every day from seventy years ago, full of corpses and debris. "Here is a place that is a stone's throw from your apartment building, American exchange student, a place which you see every day on your way to class," the photos seem to say. "Now there's a bar and a clothing shop there. Seventy years ago, it was full of rubble, and ashes, and emaciated bodies. Look, you can still recognize the buildings." That is a powerful statement; it certainly made an impression on me, as you can tell from the tone of this post.
Walking through the cemetery itself, though, really brought home the magnitude of the tragedy. We only walked along the main central path, between the entrance (where there is a memorial torch burning) and the back wall, which features a large sculpture depicting Mother Russia bearing a sprig of laurel, in remembrance of those buried here. On the wall behind her is a poem by Soviet poetess Olga Bergholz, which contains a line that goes approximately like this: "Many are buried here, and though we do not know your names, no one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten." She helped keep morale up during the siege by reading her speeches and poetry over the city's public address system in the evenings; during the day, the sound of a metronome would be played, and that too lent the city's residents a measure of comfort. Like a pulse, the constant ticking was reassurance that the city was still alive.
The view from in front of the statue is humbling. A dozen huge rectangular mounds on either side, probably 35x20 feet, with granite plaques marked with a hammer and sickle if it is a civilian grave and a star if it contains soldiers, as well as the year. And more rows of mounds behind each of them. There are more mounds like this, only smaller, outside the cemetery, dotting the outskirts of the city in this general area. Some of them are marked. Some aren't. Somehow, the unmarked ones are more disturbing to me than the marked ones, although I was ill at ease even in the very well manicured environs of Piskariovskoye--meticulously trimmed and skeletal linden, willow, and oak trees, as well as the culled stubs of rosebushes and the first green peeps from tulips planted near the Mother Russia statue. Everything has been recently cleaned in preparation for the May 9 Victory Day celebration, which is one of three days out of the year that this place sees heavy traffic. The other two are the anniversaries of the beginning (September 8) and end (January 27) of the siege.
As I finish this post, it's around 3 AM. I returned to my apartment about eleven hours ago after this tour, and I was only just able to begin writing about it about an hour ago. The whole experience was incredibly powerful, and I just feel drained thinking about everything I learned today. History is intense, man.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Chapter the Seventh: Because Laziness
So, my roommates are dragging their feet in getting pictures uploaded, so for now we're skipping Chapter the Sixth. Whenever they get around to giving me the photos I requested, then I'll publish the Lost Chronicles of Emily's Baltic Spring Break Adventure.
Anyway, I've only got about 34 more days here as I'm writing this, and I could not be more conflicted about how I feel. On one hand, I've missed home a lot, and have been more or less looking forward to leaving from the moment I arrived. At the same time, though, I have had a ton of fun here. I've met some awesome people, I've done stuff that none of my friends and family can say they've done (which makes me cooler than all of you, for all time hereafter :P), and now that the weather is finally starting to get really nice, I'm faced with the prospect of having to leave. And I'm kind of sad about it. I mean, I'm going to leave right before the major tourist season begins, otherwise known as the White Nights. The days are already absurdly long as it is (sun rises at about 6, sets around 9:30) and getting longer by about five minutes every 24 hours, but the fact that I'm going to leave mere WEEKS before the sun stops setting altogether for a while is just not fair!
At some point in the next month or so (actually less than that, [expletive]), I need to produce a 3000-word term paper on a topic I have not yet chosen. I have a few ideas floating around in my head, but I'm running into this very common problem of thinking up topics that sound neat, but that really don't have much written about them. My options for sources are basically Google Scholar and whatever I can access on the library's servers from here. I'll make it happen, but ugh, around this time every year I start wishing for the power to cut to a montage just to make the grueling process of paper-writing go faster.
Term papers make me sad, so it's a good thing I've got a lot of other things happening to take my mind off of it! (That's my argument. I'm sticking to it.) Last weekend we went and toured the summer palace at Pavlovsk and got a lesson on imperial history. The palace is gorgeous--so much gilding and detail. It was painstakingly restored after the Nazis bombed it during the war, with all of the beautiful ceilings recently repainted (ca. 1950). The exhibit contains some posters with photos of the room that you're standing in as it was immediately after the bombing, as well as a few examples of unrestored furniture and the like to compare the restoration to the original. The restorers have done an amazing job, replacing painted silk panels on the walls, repainting and reupholstering chairs and sofas, and generally returning the palace at Pavlovsk to its former glory for the most part. We also walked around the grounds and tried to imagine the garden as it will be in a few months, after all the plants start growing again. There are statues and paths and even a stream all throughout the garden; it's more like a large public park than anything, which isn't surprising, because the summer palace hasn't actually functioned as a residence for quite some time.
Last night, Brenda and Holly and I attended a performance of Swan Lake at the Mikhailovsky Theater. Our seats were on the highest balcony, in the front row; I've never been so close to the ceiling of a theater before, and the Mikhailovsky is gorgeous. That's a link to the search page on Flickr for "Mikhailovsky Theater," because one photo wouldn't do it justice. The performance was good; I've never really found ballet to be compelling, but it is very impressive. Even from the top of the house I could see how strong the dancers were. The costuming at this particular show was also really cool; I liked some of the dresses they had on the female dancers.
Here's a quick run-down of the story, for those less familiar with it: Odette is a princess under a spell that makes her take the form of a swan during the day. One evening, Prince Siegfried catches sight of her after she transforms into a human again, and they begin to dance together and gradually fall in love. Odette reveals that she will be freed from the spell if she finds a man who will remain faithful to her for all time, and Siegfried pledges his eternal love, inviting her to a Royal Ball so that he can choose her as his bride. At the Ball, the evil sorcerer Rothbart, who cursed Odette, shows up with his daughter Odile, who is enchanted to look just like Odette. (This part is often danced by the same ballerina who dances the part of Odette, so the avant-garde approach of the crazy director in Black Swan is not quite as avant-garde as the movie made it out to be.) In this way, Rothbart tricks Siegfried into breaking his vow, thus sentencing Odette to life as a swan forever. Normally, this ends with both Odette and Siegfried drowning themselves in the titular lake to break the spell, but apparently this particular company decided that such an ending was just too dang depressing. So, instead, Rothbart gets a wing ripped off and promptly dies in the final showdown against Siegfried, which has the intended effect of releasing Odette from the spell. Happily ever after, etc etc.
As for upcoming events, this weekend we're being taken to the Leningrad Blockade Museum. I'm not really entirely sure what to expect from that, but I will blog about it afterward. Next weekend, weather-permitting, we're going to Sergei's dacha for an end-of-course wrap-up discussion. I hope the weather holds out for us; we nearly visited Tamara's dacha for Orthodox Easter, but she canceled because of some health issues she's been having. And at the beginning of May, we have a 4-day excursion to Moscow. We're taking a train, and I'm more excited than I should be about that, but whatever! Moscow! Trains! Yeah!
The university is also offering a few excursions to Peterhof (lovely palace, lovelier fountains), Novgorod ("Old Russia"), and Kronstadt (I don't know anything about this place). They cost between 800-1100 rubles to go, and the first one to Novgorod is next weekend. I haven't decided if I want to do any of them, but I had better decide quickly because the deadline to sign up for Novgorod is tomorrow. They're just day trips, but that's still an amazing price for a guided tour and bus ride. I think Novgorod's price includes a meal. 1000p is about US$30, to give you an idea of what figures like "800 rubles" mean. I want to go to at least Peterhof, but I've got so much to do for the end of this course, and I would actually like to come back home with *some* money in the bank. Not hurting for cash right now, but I'd like it to stay that way.
Anyway, I've only got about 34 more days here as I'm writing this, and I could not be more conflicted about how I feel. On one hand, I've missed home a lot, and have been more or less looking forward to leaving from the moment I arrived. At the same time, though, I have had a ton of fun here. I've met some awesome people, I've done stuff that none of my friends and family can say they've done (which makes me cooler than all of you, for all time hereafter :P), and now that the weather is finally starting to get really nice, I'm faced with the prospect of having to leave. And I'm kind of sad about it. I mean, I'm going to leave right before the major tourist season begins, otherwise known as the White Nights. The days are already absurdly long as it is (sun rises at about 6, sets around 9:30) and getting longer by about five minutes every 24 hours, but the fact that I'm going to leave mere WEEKS before the sun stops setting altogether for a while is just not fair!
At some point in the next month or so (actually less than that, [expletive]), I need to produce a 3000-word term paper on a topic I have not yet chosen. I have a few ideas floating around in my head, but I'm running into this very common problem of thinking up topics that sound neat, but that really don't have much written about them. My options for sources are basically Google Scholar and whatever I can access on the library's servers from here. I'll make it happen, but ugh, around this time every year I start wishing for the power to cut to a montage just to make the grueling process of paper-writing go faster.
Term papers make me sad, so it's a good thing I've got a lot of other things happening to take my mind off of it! (That's my argument. I'm sticking to it.) Last weekend we went and toured the summer palace at Pavlovsk and got a lesson on imperial history. The palace is gorgeous--so much gilding and detail. It was painstakingly restored after the Nazis bombed it during the war, with all of the beautiful ceilings recently repainted (ca. 1950). The exhibit contains some posters with photos of the room that you're standing in as it was immediately after the bombing, as well as a few examples of unrestored furniture and the like to compare the restoration to the original. The restorers have done an amazing job, replacing painted silk panels on the walls, repainting and reupholstering chairs and sofas, and generally returning the palace at Pavlovsk to its former glory for the most part. We also walked around the grounds and tried to imagine the garden as it will be in a few months, after all the plants start growing again. There are statues and paths and even a stream all throughout the garden; it's more like a large public park than anything, which isn't surprising, because the summer palace hasn't actually functioned as a residence for quite some time.
Last night, Brenda and Holly and I attended a performance of Swan Lake at the Mikhailovsky Theater. Our seats were on the highest balcony, in the front row; I've never been so close to the ceiling of a theater before, and the Mikhailovsky is gorgeous. That's a link to the search page on Flickr for "Mikhailovsky Theater," because one photo wouldn't do it justice. The performance was good; I've never really found ballet to be compelling, but it is very impressive. Even from the top of the house I could see how strong the dancers were. The costuming at this particular show was also really cool; I liked some of the dresses they had on the female dancers.
Here's a quick run-down of the story, for those less familiar with it: Odette is a princess under a spell that makes her take the form of a swan during the day. One evening, Prince Siegfried catches sight of her after she transforms into a human again, and they begin to dance together and gradually fall in love. Odette reveals that she will be freed from the spell if she finds a man who will remain faithful to her for all time, and Siegfried pledges his eternal love, inviting her to a Royal Ball so that he can choose her as his bride. At the Ball, the evil sorcerer Rothbart, who cursed Odette, shows up with his daughter Odile, who is enchanted to look just like Odette. (This part is often danced by the same ballerina who dances the part of Odette, so the avant-garde approach of the crazy director in Black Swan is not quite as avant-garde as the movie made it out to be.) In this way, Rothbart tricks Siegfried into breaking his vow, thus sentencing Odette to life as a swan forever. Normally, this ends with both Odette and Siegfried drowning themselves in the titular lake to break the spell, but apparently this particular company decided that such an ending was just too dang depressing. So, instead, Rothbart gets a wing ripped off and promptly dies in the final showdown against Siegfried, which has the intended effect of releasing Odette from the spell. Happily ever after, etc etc.
As for upcoming events, this weekend we're being taken to the Leningrad Blockade Museum. I'm not really entirely sure what to expect from that, but I will blog about it afterward. Next weekend, weather-permitting, we're going to Sergei's dacha for an end-of-course wrap-up discussion. I hope the weather holds out for us; we nearly visited Tamara's dacha for Orthodox Easter, but she canceled because of some health issues she's been having. And at the beginning of May, we have a 4-day excursion to Moscow. We're taking a train, and I'm more excited than I should be about that, but whatever! Moscow! Trains! Yeah!
The university is also offering a few excursions to Peterhof (lovely palace, lovelier fountains), Novgorod ("Old Russia"), and Kronstadt (I don't know anything about this place). They cost between 800-1100 rubles to go, and the first one to Novgorod is next weekend. I haven't decided if I want to do any of them, but I had better decide quickly because the deadline to sign up for Novgorod is tomorrow. They're just day trips, but that's still an amazing price for a guided tour and bus ride. I think Novgorod's price includes a meal. 1000p is about US$30, to give you an idea of what figures like "800 rubles" mean. I want to go to at least Peterhof, but I've got so much to do for the end of this course, and I would actually like to come back home with *some* money in the bank. Not hurting for cash right now, but I'd like it to stay that way.
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