The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995

Abstract

The siege of Leningrad constituted one of the most dramatic episodes of World War II, one that individuals and the state began to commemorate almost immediately. Official representations of 'heroic Leningrad' omitted and distorted a great deal. Nonetheless, survivors struggling to cope with painful memories often internalized, even if they did not completely accept, the state's myths, and they often found their own uses for the state's monuments. Tracing the overlap and interplay of individual memories and fifty years of Soviet mythmaking, this book contributes to understandings of both the power of Soviet identities and the delegitimizing potential of the Soviet Union's chief legitimizing myths. Because besieged Leningrad blurred the boundaries between the largely male battlefront and the predominantly female home front, it offers a unique vantage point for a study of the gendered dimensions of the war experience, urban space, individual memory, and public commemoration.

From famine to therapeutic weight loss: Hunger, psychological responses, and energy balance‐related behaviors

“…100 Eighty percent of those who achieve clinically significant WL fail to sustain that WL over a period of 12 months or more. 101 Stalin's famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s, 104,105 The Warsaw Ghetto 1941-43, 29,106 Leningrad 1941-44, [107][108][109] The As semistarvation progresses, depleted physical energy and persistent fatigue render subjects cold-sensitive, amotivational, and sedentary. 1,29 The constant preoccupation with food has been reported to become less apparent until food is presented, at which point they "become aggressive, grab the food and devour it at once" 29 (pp.…”

The Soviet Culture of Victory

“…The official narrative had local variations but they all followed an overarching pattern. 50 It would move through several alterations in lockstep with the evolution of the political climate. Stalin's leading role was removed under Nikita Khrushchev (1953/56-64) but carefully reinserted under Leonid Brezhnev .…”

Introduction

“…7 This project's treatment of historical memory forms an important complement to Lisa Kirschenbaum's recent monograph The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995, for both texts fully expose the significant metamorphoses, if not the outright distortions, introduced into the siege narrative by the workings of memory. 8 Our cluster focuses on an equally slippery task addressed by many of the siege authors: to (re) present the siege, not in its aftermath, but in its immediacy, while, as Ginzburg puts it, " the signs were uncertain and confused," in the time when, "before having had a chance to take shape, the Introduction 279 painful associations became blurred." 9 Representing the siege in its presentness became a challenging task for many narratives from the time.…”