WARTIME commemorations come round so often that the 70th anniversary of the siege of Leningrad may seem unremarkable. More attention is paid nowadays to the battles for Moscow and Stalingrad. Yet the collapse of the Soviet Union has made available a trove of new material. In the first full-length book on the siege since 1969, Anna Reid (a former Economist journalist) uses these records to compelling effect to tell this horrific and occasionally inspiring story.
There is no doubting its epic scale. Launched on September 8th 1941, the siege was the deadliest in history. It famously lasted for almost 900 days and killed some 750,000 civilians (almost one in three of the pre-war population) and about the same number of soldiers. The eventual expulsion of German forces has left an image of determined Soviet citizens holding out against frenzied Nazi attacks in freezing conditions. Dmitri Shostakovich’s bombastic “Leningrad” symphony, broadcast towards enemy lines in August 1942, has cemented this impression. Yet it is misleading, in two respects.
Read Full Article »
