New issue

Issues of 2008

The postcards of the besieged Leningrad

Leningrad. The severe winter of 1941√42 was the sequence of the most tragic and heroic days of the blockade. The town looked like a dead one: the streets were blocked up with snow, wounds stared from masses of buildings, tired off wires hanged lifelessly, trolleybuses dead-froze in snow banks. There was no bread, no light and no water. However, the city kept surviving.

In the first winter of the blockade, a lot of famous painters, architects and scientists that refused, in spite of their old age and weak health, to leave the city, used to work in the cellars of the Hermitage, the Russian Museum and the Academy of Arts. They understood the importance of their job and courageously executed their duties. However, the number of them kept decreasing and their stamina neared its end. Hunger, bombing and shelling killed more than hundred of people during this most vicious blockade winter. On the territory of the ⌠Ostrov Decabristov■ memorial cemetery, there is a gravestone with a sign upon it: ⌠Here is the place were professors of the Academy of Arts were buried in 1942, namely the following ones: Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, Oskar Rudolfovich Munz, Yakov Germanovich Gevirz, Pavel Semenovich Naumov, Alexey Yeremeevich Karev, Pavel Aleksandrovich Shillingovsky, Vladimir Alexandrovich Frolov and a senior research worker, Fursov Constantin Petrovich■. A number of the most elderly and sick artists were evacuated via the ⌠Road of life■ to the eastern parts of the country.

Postcard ⌠The squadron of the Hero of the Soviet Union Tchelnokov bombing the enemy's troop trains on their way to Shlisselburg■. Artist V. Sokolov. Postmark ⌠Field post-office ╧1101 25-3-43■ [zoom (76k)]

Since the first days of the war, the artists did everything for defending their hometown. More than a hundred of men (members of the Leningrad Artistic Union) joined the army. A lot of them served in the militia forces. The ones that had not joined the ranks, worked on the construction of fortifications and got training in the air defense troops.

The labor of painters, sculptors and graphic artists turned to be very important for the struggling city. As early as from the end of June 1941, a big group of painters started to work on camouflaging military objects, first of all, air bases. The most important for the civil life objects, famous objects of architecture and important monuments were to be concealed from shelling and bombing. A particular type of disguise was developed for every object of architecture and sculpture. Strange planking-coated heaps of sand emerged in the city and the monuments bases stood empty┘

However, among all the activities of the artists, the mass agitation was the most important. Leningrad painters rapidly responded to the war episodes and municipal events. They worked on the production of leaflets, made drawing for newspapers and created artistic postcards, which were printed in great numbers of copies.

The plots of the first blockade postcards were meant to mobilize the citizens in the struggle against the enemy. Possibly looking naeve today, these miniatures helped people to believe in nearing the enemy▓s defeat in those days of the 1941 autumn. The so-called documentary postcards comprise typographically printed photos published in a small number of copies. These postcards use only a limited number of plots and often they feature real combat situations: ⌠There are no impassable routes for a partisan■, ⌠Partisans destroying an enemy plane■, ⌠Partisans prepare crashing of an enemy train■, etc.

Not only painters, graphic artists, sculptors and architects participated in creating artistic postcards but also composers and poets. The musical-poetical postcards occupied a particular place in the history of the blockade postcards. Lyrics of war and romantic songs, usually complemented with their notes, were printed on their face sides. War slogans were often printed on their backsides. Such items were not distributed via the ordinary sales chain, but were supplied to the military personnel. That▓s why they are quite rare today.

Themes of such postcards vary a lot: glorious military past of the Russian people, combat episodes of the Great Patriotic War, glorious deeds of the heroes of the Leningrad front and the partisan movement. Often postcards feature drawings from the ⌠Combat pencil■ magazine, reproductions of famous works by Russian and Soviet painters.

More than one thousand types of illustration postcards were published in the days of the blockade, turning to be a kind of memorial record of the Blockade history.

Envelope ⌠Stay on alert!■ [zoom (71k)]

Several publishing houses published postcards in the war-time Leningrad: ⌠Iskusstvo■ (Leningrad branch), ⌠Voenizdat■ of the People▓s Commissariat of Defense, the Leningrad branch of the Union of Soviet Artists (LOSSH), etc. Dire conditions of the Blockade resulted in the inferior quality of these postcards. However, the crude grayish paper, weak colors and defect types did not diminish the power of their agitation effect.

An ordinary postal card delivered from Leningrad to the front, or to evacuated to the East citizens of Leningrad produced a stunning effect on an addressee. Of course, all the correspondence was subjected to the most severe censorship those days. The cards containing any information hinting at the real state of affairs did not reach the destination. However, each postcard delivered by the postman was a proof of a dear person staying alive and city holding on.

Sometimes the letter meant returning a dying person back to life. Natalya Sidorovna Petrishina all the 900 days of the Blockade worked as a postman and delivered post to the people. Once she brought back to life a person who had already laid down giving in and prepared to meet his death as an escape. She brought him a letter from the front from his only son and red it aloud; and the man returned to live and rose to his feet. Petrishina was awarded the order of Lenin for her labor.

It is most probably that an enormous amount of joy was brought to a house in Kovensky street on the eve of the New Year 1944 by a postcard from a private, Morozov, written down in some trench with a bad-quality pencil and featuring a following content: ⌠Hello, dear wife, Shura! Your husband greets you┘ I have received your postcard and is so grateful to you for it. I inform you that I am alive and in perfect health.■

Even in those dire days, people used telling about them being in love, asking to get married. Sometimes, however, a postcard turned to be the last object remained from a perished soldier in memory of him.

In the family of my uncle▓s daughter, such a postcard, written by my uncle Sergey Semenovich Kovalevsky on 24 December 1942, is kept: ⌠Hello, my respected spouse, Katya, and my little children, Galochka and Vasilek. I am sending my greetings to you and blow kisses. Let me kiss you heartily and wish you a Happy New Year! Wait for me joining you after passing victoriously across the city of Leningrad┘ You will read in a newspaper about our heroic deeds. May be, it is my last postcard.■ He sent to Moscow also his most recent photo taken in the village of Kamenka in November 1942. In winter 1943, S.S. Kovalevsky perished in the military operation of breaking the siege of Leningrad and was buried near the railway junction of Mga.

When the blockade was broken, the evacuated citizens of Leningrad faced another major problem. The entrance to the city was limited, and sometimes, even to people from other towns it was easier to get inside the city than to native Leningrad citizens. This problem was especially important for the parents separated from their evacuated children. The letters exchange between them is especially touching. The entrance to the city for the smallest children younger than the school age was forbidden, and their relatives managed to bring them hiding them in their luggage. Getting them to the city in this way was risky and even dangerous to their health.

As the years go by, the postcards of the days of the Leningrad blockade become more and more rare. However, the interest to them remains to be very high. They are the subjects of collecting not only in our country, but also abroad. Often, they are exhibited in museums, as items of big his-toric value.