THE TRAIN ON WHICH VERA INBER WAS RIDING SLOWED to a halt just after daybreak. No station was in sight, no plane in the sky, no sound of gunfire. All was stillness. Even the men in the compartment where an endless game of preference was in progress played with stealthy quietness. The Lieutenant General, whistling under his breath, named his suit. A military engineer next to him tapped his pipe so gently on the edge of the table it sounded like a distant woodpecker. A single wisp of tobacco smoke floated out the door and into the corridor, where it was caught in the rays of the rising sun.
So still was it that to Vera Inber the train seemed to be moving on velvet rails.
She had seen few signs of war. At Volkhov two fighter planes flew over the train for a while, and a small detachment of marines, the golden anchors on their uniforms glittering in the sun’s first rays, marched down the platform.
To the right and the left of the track the holes, filled with water, seemed to be more frequent. Along the telegraph line there were also holes, but smaller ones. The Germans, she thought, are very economical, very German in their bombing. They wasted nothing: big bombs for the railroad tracks, small bombs for the telegraph poles. Now the forest was scorched by explosions and there were uprooted trees. She saw a birch, its bark crisscrossed with names and messages. The history of a lifetime had been scratched out on the white surface. Now it sagged, half-burnt, blackened, torn.
When the train pulled through the next station, Vera Inber read the name, neatly outlined on white-painted stones that stood among a bed of red and white petunias. The name was Mga. Vera Inber had never heard it before. These stations, she thought, all had drowsy, ancient Russian names . . . names that smelled of the pitch and the honey of the pine and birch forests: Mga . . . Budogoshch . . . Khvoinaya . . .
In those days the novelist Vera Ketlinskaya spent most of her time in an old stone mansion at No. 18 Ulitsa Voinova, just off Liteiny Prospekt, a stone’s throw from the Neva. Here was the headquarters of the Leningrad Writers Union, and here she sought to organize her colleagues in Leningrad’s war effort. An aeon had passed since that Sunday in the country at Sviritsa, where she had been teaching her ten-month-old son, Serezhka, to take his first halting steps and someone interrupted with the news: War!
In the last days of August her task was not easy. She was besieged with requests for permission to leave the city. People wanted a pass to get out before the Germans came.
There was panic and nervousness. Not that Vera Ketlinskaya was inclined to blame anyone. The situation was frightening. The city was preparing for battle in the streets. The examples of Madrid and of London were vivid in the minds of all. Block-by-block defense units were being set up. Because there were so few guns, Finnish knives—long-bladed hunting weapons—were being passed out.
She tried to persuade some of the writers who obviously could make little contribution to Leningrad’s defense to leave, But many refused to go. One was Yevgeny Shvarts, the playwright whose The Naked King reminded more than one Leningrader of life under Stalin (which may be the reason it remained in Shvarts’s literary archives after his death and was only performed ten years after Stalin’s death and eight years after Shvarts’s).
The Leningrad Theater of Comedy was being evacuated. But Shvarts would not join his associates. He said he would stay on in his granite building at No. 9 Griboyedov Canal, where he was a member of the fire brigade and his wife belonged to the first-aid team.
Shvarts was no Communist, but he was a patriot.1 A few months before the war started he wrote a play in which a foreign spy plane landed somewhere on the steppes of southwest Russia. The censors banned the play. “Really,” they told Nikolai Akimov, director of the Theater of Comedy, “do you think our air frontiers are not secure? The basic theme of this play is unjustified and impossible.”
Shvarts volunteered to help Vera Ketlinskaya. He was with her when a Party secretary telephoned from Smolny about a uniformed war correspondent. The secretary wanted the man released so he could be sent to the rear. “This is a military question,” said the Party man, “not a literary one.”
“Indeed,” Shvarts commented wryly, “it is a military matter—a matter of getting out of the military.”
Two days after the correspondent escaped to the safety of Moscow an article he had written earlier was published by Leningradskay a Pravda, proclaiming: “We will defend Leningrad with our naked breasts!”
One day—it was August 27—the office door opened, and Vera Ketlinskaya saw a small, graceful woman wearing a light coat and a coquettish hat under which struggled a mop of curly grayish hair.
“How do you do!” the woman said. “I’m Vera Inber.”
She walked across the room, her high heels ringing on the parquet.
To Vera Ketlinskaya it was like an appearance from Mars. Vera Inber was fifty-three years old and a well-known Moscow poet. Her husband was the distinguished physician, Professor Ilya Davidovich Strashun. What was she doing in Leningrad?
“My husband and I have come to live in Leningrad,” she said simply. “I don’t know for how long, but at least until spring.”
Was it possible that this chic, self-possessed woman did not know what she had walked into, did not know that at any moment the Germans might break into the streets of Leningrad, that the city might soon be encircled, indeed might already be within a German ring?
Vera Ketlinskaya hurriedly cleared the room and began to speak confidentially with Vera Inber.
“I know all that,” Vera Inber replied. “You see, my husband had a choice —to be chief of a hospital in Archangel or in Leningrad. We decided that since my daughter and granddaughter have been evacuated and since, as a poet, I should in time of war be in the center of events, naturally Leningrad would be much more interesting.”
“But—” Vera Ketlinskaya interrupted.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Vera Inber continued. “But, first of all, I believe that Leningrad will not give up. And second, well, we are not young. And for the middle-aged to sit in the rear is somehow very shameful.”
That night Leningrad was put under curfew. Movement in the streets between 10 in the evening and 5 A.M. was forbidden without special pass. And that evening Vera Inber spoke for the first time on the Leningrad radio. She recalled that Alexander Herzen, the nineteenth-century Russian critic, democrat and patriot, once said that “tales of the burning of Moscow, of the Battle of Borodino, of the Berezina Battle, of the fall of Paris, were the fairy stories of my childhood—my Iliad and my Odyssey.” So in these present days, she told her listeners, Russia was creating for future generations new Odysseys, new Iliads.
In the fortnight during which August imperceptibly blended into September the city never had seemed more beautiful. It stood brooding and grim, Peter’s military city, on guard, under heavy attack, firm, belligerent. Never had there been such an August—hot, dry, summery, a clear sky of distant blue curved like a saucer high over the city, the trees and shrubs flowering magnificently. The great lindens glowed with gold and purple and russet along the wide avenues, under the trees carpets of mushrooms. An ill omen, the babushkas said. Many mushrooms, many deaths. The green lawns and flowerbeds of the parks were crisscrossed with trenches and packed with gun sites.
Leningrad was preparing to meet the enemy. Catherine’s equestrian Peter no longer reared his mighty chargér on the banks of the Neva. Around the heroic figure were piled layer after layer of sandbags, covered with gray wooden planking. Gone were the Klodt stallions from the Anichkov Bridge, buried in the Summer Gardens and protected by mounds of earth. Only the stone sphinxes with their great paws still guarded the Neva embankment, and the bowed caryatids still shouldered their terrible burdens at the portals of the Hermitage. And the ugly monument to Catherine II stood in all its ugliness in Ostrovsky Square.
The weather continued hot. Kirov Prospekt, always so clean and sparkling, always washed down each morning just after dawn, always swept each night, now was dusty and dirty. Rubbish was collecting in the gutters. The Prospekt was the grand boulevard that cut across Kamenny Ostrov—stone island. Once it had been Kamenny Ostrov Prospekt, but like so many of Leningrad’s boulevards its name had changed. Thus, Sadovaya (Garden) Boulevard had become Third of July Street. Morsky (Sea), Teatralny (Theater), Ofitsersky (Officer), Millionnaya (Million)—all had been changed. You could almost write a history of Leningrad by chronicling the names of the streets. There was the time early in the 1920’s when Nevsky Prospekt was known as NEPsky—after the NEP men or private traders whom Lenin had brought back under NEP or the New Economic Policy. In those days NEPsky was graced by the fine fish monger, Zolotsev, and the sausage king, Marshan. There was a gambling club on Graf sky (Count) Street, across from the trotters on Troitsky (Trinity). Later Grafsky was changed to Proletarian Street. But always, whatever the changes, the streets seemed to come back to their original names. No one ever got used to calling the Nevsky Twenty-fifth of October Street, and soon it would be officially the Nevsky once again.2
Day by day long military columns moved through the city, slowly pushing down the boulevards, many made up of broken units, men who had survived one battle and were en route to another which they might not survive. Beside the Karpovka embankment stood a number of dusty carts and horses. Red Army men clambered down to the river with buckets and pans. A crowd of forty or fifty silently watched them.
The sight of the Red Army men drinking water from the river when there was a tap in every apartment in the city somehow seemed unbelievably grievous.
Finally someone shouted, “Fellows! What are you drinking that dirty water for? Come around to the courtyard.”
Aleksandr Shtein had a room at the Astoria Hotel. That was the hostelry where the Germans planned to hold a joint victory dinner with the Finns. Residence in the hotel was controlled by the Leningrad City commandant. Shtein gave the hotel director Shanikhin his order and got the key to a corner room on the mezzanine floor, looking out on the square across from the handsome monument to Nicholas I.
The Astoria had become headquarters for Soviet war correspondents, for the pilots of the Soviet-produced Douglas DC— 3’s who flew back and forth, low over the fighting lines, usually without fighter cover. Here were the chiefs and technical assistants of big Leningrad factories, awaiting evacuation, representatives of the central ministries, important and not-so-important refugees from the Baltic states. Here were a few ordinary Leningraders and singers like Lydiya Sukharevskaya and Boris Tenin. Here the newspaperRed Star parked its Emka, the battered light car used by the poet, Mikhail Svetlov, and the prose writer, Lev Slavin.
Shtein looked out on the cast-iron figure of Nicholas I, astride his cast-iron horse, and beyond that to the dark-red granite of the old German consulate. It had flown up to June 21st an enormous Nazi banner which flapped from the roof. It had been broken by angry demonstrators on the second day of the war and not repaired.
At dusk a maid made the rounds of every room to be certain that the heavy blackout curtains were drawn. If any light showed, Shanikhin was on the spot instantly with his chief assistant, Nina.
Down the corridor from Shtein came the sound of a husky, bold, coarse voice singing:
My Marusichka
Oh,my darling,
My Marusichka,
Oh, my sweetheart.
Shtein had heard the voice and the song before—in the Golden Lion in Tallinn. It was a record by the White Russian cafe singer Leshchenko singing his favorite Paris song, “Marusichka.” Who was playing it? Shtein found the room occupied by a big, bluff submarine commissar, a man who had fought through the Finnish war, the wearer of an Order of Lenin, a man who reminded him of the correspondent Vsevolod Vishnevsky. The commissar was suffering from a light case of tuberculosis and had been sent back from Kronstadt for treatment. He had gotten as far as the Astoria. Where he would go next no one could say. He sat in his room playing “Marusichka.” Then he played “Tatyana”; then “Vanya”; finally, “Masha.” He was indefatigable. So was Leshchenko.
The commissar had a stock of Leshchenko records and a case of beer. As long as the beer lasted, as long as the records lasted, the commissar sat in his room. Finally, the beer ran out, the phonograph broke. He packed up his things and went back to Kronstadt.
In the restaurant the band still played. No one had thought of evacuating the musicians. No one had thought of mobilizing them to military duties. They were incorporated in the ARP squad “without release from production duties.” They played on.
The restaurant was directed by a lady with a grand manner whom the correspondents called “Lady Astor.” One night when all the rumors were bad S. Abramovich-Black, director of one of the fleet newspapers and the descendant of a long line of Russian and non-Russian naval officers, approached her with all his gallantry and announced: “My cutter is at your service at the pier on Lake Ladoga. I give you my word of honor as an officer, madam, that without you we will not leave. You may go on working in peace.”
The fact that Abramovich-Black had no cutter and that there was no cutter waiting on Lake Ladoga made no difference.
The band struck up the “Barcarole.” Everyone felt better.
German leaflets began to appear in town, scattered from planes by parachute: “Beat the Jews. Beat the Commissars. Their mugs beg to be bashed in. Wait for the full moon. Bayonets in the earth! Surrender!”
A well-known writer visited Shtein’s next-door neighbor. The writer’s lips were white, his hands shook and somehow he looked obnoxious. He knew that the Germans had launched a new assault on the city and he had read the leaflets. He began to reason with himself aloud: “I have never said anything publicly against Fascism. I never signed any petitions. I’m not a Party man. My mother, it is true, was a Jew, but, on the other hand, my father was from the nobility. I’ve found some papers which verify that.”
In a three-room de luxe suite lived some young Estonians. One was playing a ukulele. Each had a wine glass, and a bottle of champagne stood on the table. A young girl in a tight sweater was doing a tango with a blond young man. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world. But at dawn they would be parachuted behind the German lines to organize resistance in Estonia.
Vladimir Gankevich, the Leningrad athlete who was now a Red Army lieutenant, had been given a responsible task by his commander, Colonel Pavlov. The order came from Marshal Voroshilov himself. Gankevich was to go to Murmansk and inspect the Fourteenth Army preparations for ski operations, which would commence once the snow had fallen. On the morning of August 29 Gankevich kissed his sweetheart, Galya, good-bye at the Moscow station. The hubbub was overwhelming. He heard a woman crying, “Senushka, what will happen to you? And to me? God help us! You are abandoning your home and going God knows where!”
Gankevich looked from the window as the train pulled out and saw mostly men in uniform. Some had handkerchiefs at their eyes. Most of the passengers were women and children, part of the hasty new effort to evacuate from Leningrad those not necessary for the city’s defense.
Across the compartment sat a youngster, eight or nine years old. His mother was crying. The youngster said, “Don’t cry! We’ll beat the Germans and soon be back with Papa. Did you see the gun he was carrying?”
Gankevich turned to a woman beside him and asked where she was going.
“I don’t know,” she said. “The evacuation has begun. All those with children are supposed to leave Leningrad—for somewhere in the Urals.”
Suddenly a youngster named Volodya shouted, “Look at the balloons. Look, Mama! So many!”
Gankevich looked, too. To his amazement he saw German paratroops descending in a broad meadow near the railroad tracks. He heard the heavy thump of antiaircraft guns and saw the Germans begin to form up at the far edge of the field.
The train picked up speed and roared down the tracks past a small station without stopping. Gankevich got just a glimpse of the name: Mga.
An army captain quieted the passengers. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “Nothing dangerous about that. The Germans will all be wiped out before we get to Volkhov.”
He walked from compartment to compartment, joking with the children. Finally he slid into the seat beside Gankevich.
“Do you have some tobacco?” he asked pleasantly, then whispered, “You understand what’s happened? The Germans have captured Mga. Connections with Leningrad have been broken.”
Aleksandr Rozen, the war correspondent, made his weary way into Leningrad. He had been with the 70th Division at Medved during the exciting days in July when they roughed up Manstein’s 56th Panzers at Soltsy. He was wounded in the savage Nazi assault which broke the division and sent it reeling back toward Leningrad. Sent to Novgorod, the day the city was falling to the Germans, he wandered through the city’s ancient Kremlin, older than Moscow’s, through echoing corridors, empty rooms, the abandoned headquarters of the Soviet command, which had already evacuated the city.
Painfully, he had made his way north, stage by stage, seeking the remnants of the division, remnants which constantly eluded him. Valdai, Kuzhenkino, Bologoye, Uglovka, Borovichi, Khvoinaya. At each ancient Russian village he was a little late. Finally, at Khvoinaya a commandant—against strictest orders—put him on a hospital train for Leningrad. The old engine pulled the train through one station after another, all in ruins. He saw smashed trains lying on sidings, stations burning, towns leveled.
The train passed through a little station—Mga. Rozen had never heard the name before. Soon he was at Obukhovo on Leningrad’s outskirts. One more stop, then the Leningrad freight station.
At headquarters he inquired about the 70th Division. It was in bits— one unit fighting at Lisino-Korpus, another near Tosno, a third at Ushaki. He hunted out the commanders. Fedyunin was dead. Krasnov was in the hospital. Not a man remained of Krasnov’s regiment. Colonel Podlutsky of the artillery unit was heavily wounded—in the hospital. He had led his detachment out of encirclement 125 miles behind the German lines.
Rozen walked out of the hospital down Engineers Street and turned into the Sadovaya. He went slowly, not hurrying. Strangely, his spirits had begun to lift as he walked down Leningrad’s boulevards. It seemed to him that he had already survived the worst, that Leningrad would stand, that Leningrad would survive, that Leningrad would conquer death.
He walked on down the street to the offices of the newspaper, On Guard of the Fatherland, for which he had written during the winter war with Finland. He met Editorial Chief Litvinov and asked what he could do to be useful. Litvinov thought for a moment.
“I think I’d like to have you go over to Lake Ladoga and interview the chief of the Ladoga flotilla.”
Rozen couldn’t understand. Why should he go to Lake Ladoga? The battle was being fought at Pushkin, at Kolpino.
“Well,” said Litvinov, “you see, railroad connections between Leningrad and the rest of the country have been cut.”
Mga . . . Rozen’s hospital train had been the last to go through the little station.
The Leningrad Public Library had shipped off 360,000 of its most priceless items (out of a collection of 9,000,000). Voltaire’s Library, the Pushkin archives and the incunabula had gone off in July. Now the attic had been filled with sand and the most precious remaining books were removed to the cellars. The main reading room was closed, and a smaller room on the first floor was opened for 150 readers. The card catalogue, the information bureau, the print collections, had been put in the subbasement, and many treasures had been transferred to the gloomy subterranean galleries of the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Alexander Nevsky catacombs.
Some fifty-two boxes of treasures from the great Pushkin palaces of Catherine and Alexander had been shipped out before the Germans swept in. The valuables of the Russian Museum were sent to Gorky and then, to the horror of Director P. K. Baltun, on to Perm by river barge.
During the second half of July most of the animals in the Zoological Gardens had been evacuated. So had the Lenfilm studios, the scientific institutes of the Academy of Science and other institutes, totaling ninety-two in all.
Most of the great artistic ensembles had now left Leningrad. The Philharmonic and the Pushkin Drama Theater went to Novosibirsk, the Conservatory to Tashkent, the Mariinsky Opera and Ballet to Perm, the Maly Opera to Orenburg. Two great trains, on July 1 and July 20, had carried off the treasures of the Hermitage and a third was being prepared.
Director Orbeli had fifty tons of shavings and three tons of cotton wadding in which to pack the first two trainloads. But for the third he had nothing but wood for boxes. By August 30 he had packed 350 boxes. Work was starting on the 351st when the order came through to halt. The Germans it seemed, had captured Mga, a little station on the last railroad linking Leningrad with mainland Russia. Perhaps it would soon be recovered. Meanwhile, hold up on the packing. The boxes stayed for a time in the main vestibule of the Hermitage. Just outside, the lindens had begun to turn yellow, but their leaves did not fall. The days were so sunny. It was still as warm as midsummer with nights that were calm, clear, moonlit.
1 For many years Shvarts and Nikolai M. Oleinikov had edited a children’s magazine called Chizh i Yezh. Oleinikov had been a Party member since the first days of the Revolution. He was arrested and executed in 1937 as an “enemy of the people.” Shvarts was so shaken he was unable to write for several years.
2 The change was made January 15, 1944.