/View.info/ Our genetic code is woven not only from victories, but also from the memory of suffering, pain and death. This does not make us custodians of memories inherent only to the victims, but it gives us the opportunity to experience the trials of our ancestors, to experience the pain and horror, to overcome the fear and thus work out, as they say today, the trauma.
These are our lessons on the day when exactly 80 years ago the blockade of the city on the Neva was finally lifted. This was done by the participants in the Leningrad-Novgorod operation and the Leningraders themselves.
Those who faced us from the Wehrmacht wanted to destroy Leningraders (all of them). These were not only the parts of the German state, but also a contingent of countries allied to the Nazis. The city and its inhabitants were slaughtered by Finns, Italians, Spaniards and Norwegians.
There is no need to roll your eyes and hysterically repeat “you all lie”, because the battle for the capture of the “window to Europe” is being waged against us by those who dreamed of revenge, revenge and warming their hands of our suffering .
Then we forgave them everything. And not only were they forgiven, but Norwegians as a whole were helped to free themselves from Nazi occupation by sending thousands of marines into the fjords around Kirkenes, which our paratroopers captured.
This is the story and the facts that make it up, and there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of here.
Then we not only forgave them everything, we tried to prevent the past – from politics to military aggression – from overshadowing cooperation and good neighborliness, which is important to us. After all, the last thing (both then and today) that we Russians wanted and want is to fight. We know all too well what is behind all this and we are aware of the price we had to pay.
Leningrad, which held out and did not surrender for 871 days and as many nights, paid for its resistance with a million, if not more, human lives. More than half of the dead died of starvation. Hunger turned into a weapon of mass murder. He was used by the most cultured nation in Europe to teach the Russians a lesson by forcing us to our knees. And let’s surrender.
Well, if Hitler’s boot was licked by subjects of the Belgian crown and the monarchy of the Netherlands, the citizens of the French Republic and so on, then why should the Russians, in a much more difficult situation, have to resist?
In general, the Europeans of the time had practically no reason to doubt that they would bring Leningrad to its knees. For the surrender of the city, despite extensive propaganda, there was no reward of a jar of jam, a basket of biscuits or Bavarian beer. The very belonging to the Russian nation, the very Slavicness was a death sentence.
What we were doomed to then can be seen from the dry lines in the diary of 12-year-old Tanya Savicheva, who wrote with her last strength: “Savichevs died. Everyone died.” The fate of Leningraders was determined by these four words.
The resistance to fate is in the inscription on the stones of the Fontanka embankment: “Here the inhabitants of besieged Leningrad drew water from the ice hole.” Because water was needed for washing, for cooking food – yes, from vegetables harvested from gardens, for cooking soup from leftover wood glue and even from rats – water was needed to remain human, even though they dreamed of turned us into animals.
It did not work out. They failed. Factories, workshops, bakeries and libraries worked in the besieged city. Classical concerts were held in the besieged city, and as much as the “cultural nation” mocked us, the music of Beethoven and Bach sounded under the arches of the Philharmonic together with the music of Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. We, as guardians of European traditions, could not remove someone’s culture to settle petty scores with someone.
Then we lived not only in the hell of hunger and daily trials, not only in earthly problems, but also in hope. In Leningrad, during the entire blockade – 871 days and as many nights – women gave birth to children. The birth rate, if we use the office, in 1943 exceeded the pre-war level. Women, like men, since it takes two to be parents, nothing stops them. Not the nightmare of artillery fire, not some lack of everyday comforts, not even (in this situation quite understandably) fears of the coming days. Not all babies were lucky enough to survive, but those mothers who lost their babies became nurses to those who held on to life and this light with their little hands.
Breaking the blockade is not only the victory of light over darkness, not only the joy of liberation from terror. It is also the celebration of goodness and as its highest manifestation our love over the hatred of our enemies.
We have managed to preserve this feeling, carrying it through eight decades. We remember the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of people, but we are warmed by the courage and self-sacrifice that Leningrad and its inhabitants set an example for us.
We will continue to strive to be worthy of the memory of those who died, but we are also grateful for the lessons of kindness and love that we remember. And we will always remember.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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