During World War Two the people of St. Petersburg, that time named Leningrad, spent almost 900 days under German siege. Soviet army lifted the siege on January 27th, 1944 and this day is very important and memorable for St. Petersburg. Today we will talk about the most terrifying pages of the city history that must be remembered.

What happened

The Siege of Leningrad started on September 8th, 1941. The battles around the city started in the summer of the same year, but German troops weren’t able to take the city and made a decision to siege it. Leningrad was isolated from the rest of Soviet Union, suffered from hunger, cold and constant missile attacks. Winters those years were extremely severe but there was no fuel to warm homes, no electricity, and no water. The only link to the country was Ladoga Lake that permitted to deliver at least some urgent supplies to the sieged city. The siege, that is called «блокада» in Russian, was partially breached on January 18, 1943, and completely lifted on January 27th. It’s still hard to say how many lives the siege took, according to raw estimations there were from 600 thousand to 1.5 million casualties.

The sieged city kept living

Life in the city hadn’t stopped even during those years. People tried to keep the city alive, even though it was a very difficult task. Some factories kept working. Painters and artists helped to camouflage city buildings to save them from enemy missiles. Even some schools, theaters, and museums kept working to support the citizens. The only connection to the rest of the country was Ladoga Lake, the road across which was called The Road of Life (Дорога жизни). It was an ice road used in winter to supply the city with essentials and evacuate people.

No one is forgotten

The Siege is a tragic page in St. Petersburg and world history that can’t be forgotten. In St. Petersburg, there are many places that can tell us about these events. You can visit the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad to learn more about this time period, see The Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad on Moskovskiy prospect or visit Piskariov Memorial Cemetery, where the remains of 420,000 city residents who died that time are buried. There is a famous saying in Russian: «Никто не забыт, ничто не забыто»/ No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten. The tragic historical events have to be remembered and honored, so they never happen again.