Josiah Canon DeSarro-Raynal, JDP History '25 and incoming JBHR Submissions Editor, reflects on the formation of memory in the wake of the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) in both its organic and national manifestations. The Siege of Leningrad is one of the most horrific episodes in Soviet history, if not in all of human history. Estimates suggest that nearly 1.5 million people died during the prolonged fighting that lasted more than two years, making it, as Noah Krasman aptly describes, “one of the most tragic losses of civilian life [in] modern warfare.”[1] Many historians have studied the Siege and explored it in various contexts, including broader studies of World War II or the Soviet Union; David Glantz’s The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944 is a prime example of a thorough look into the event, and it concludes that the battle “has no peer” in terms of drama, symbolism, and sheer human suffering.[2] Other historians, such as Alexis Peri and Lisa Kirschenbaum, have focused on historical memory or the social history of the Siege. The Siege of Leningrad acted as a fulcrum around which collective memory in the Soviet Union revolved; the event both enabled the Soviet population to acknowledge their own historical significance and played a major role in the State-led process of solidifying a shared identity for the country and its citizens based on the pre-existing historical narrative in which the city was perceived.
Analysis of Leningraders’ memory-producing activities during the Siege reveals (1) a collective self-awareness that they were undergoing a critical moment in history and (2) that they sought to find meaning in their experiences through situating them in relation to the past.[3] Such activities demonstrate how memory was understood in the context of the city’s history as an important symbol of tradition and culture in both Russian and Soviet traditions. This study focuses on Leningrad’s impact on the collective memory in the Soviet Union, not the collective memory of Leningrad;[4] it is not a comprehensive analysis, but a precise exploration into how collective memory was formed and altered by the experience of the Siege. The impact of the Siege of Leningrad on collective memory can only be understood after consideration of Leningrad’s position in broader historical narratives. The larger history of Leningrad begins with the city’s founding as St Petersburg in the early eighteenth century as a window to the west, through which modern European thought would enter Imperial Russia, at least in the vision of then-Tsar Peter the Great. A sense of falseness pervaded the city because it was artificially constructed for a determined purpose. In the decades preceding the war, the city’s inhabitants, or Leningraders, were encouraged to conceive of themselves as “participating in a grand, glorious, and historic march to the radiant future.”[5] Leningrad’s status as the cradle of the revolution was instrumental to its identity in the years leading up to World War II; that idea promulgated the city’s connection to the entire nation. As Glantz states, the city represented a “bastion of socialism and Russian national identity.”[6] While Moscow became the nation’s capital, Leningrad kept an authoritative status in Russian history, constructed upon a tradition reaching back centuries.[7] The city was a testament to the triumph of the Soviet state while it also maintained the memory of a glorious Russian past. A history dating back to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 contained a perceived continuous struggle against the hostile West, at the forefront of which stood Leningrad due to its position as the focal point of the overarching historical narrative and site of particularly era-defining moments.[8] A long tradition of mythologizing the city through literature and other artistic expressions persisted, particularly following the Civil War in the 1920s.[9] Such a tendency laid the groundwork for intense self-understanding during World War II among its inhabitants as figures on a historical stage that bridged generations but was still united by the idea of constant place.[10] This process of self-actualization took place in the forms of many memory-producing activities. The war, and specifically the Siege of Leningrad, provided both the state and individuals the space to collectively and clearly realize themselves in a historical narrative, even if that narrative was based on a conflated mythology; the experience at Leningrad was essential to this self-realization both because it demonstrated an instance in which the country overcame unimaginable terrors of war and served as a further historical moment in the pre-existing narrative maintained by the city itself as a national symbol.[11] Lisa Kirschenbaum’s definitive study on the memory of the Siege of Leningrad thoroughly investigates how the experience was understood during and after the War throughout Soviet history.[12] She prefaces her in-depth exploration with fixed definitions of “memory” as “the elements in this amalgam [of public and collective experience] that are primarily personal or autobiographical”[13] and “myth” as “the shared narratives that give form and meaning to the recall of past experience.”[14] These elucidations provide a framework for understanding what can be characterized as memory-producing activities. During the Siege, both Leningraders and the state participated in such practices (occasionally working together), which included keeping diaries, representing the siege and the broader war in a variety of artforms such as film and literature, and establishing memorials to the people’s efforts for the city’s defense,[15] in an attempt to, as Alexis Peri states, “interpret the historical significance of the war,”[16] and, more pressingly, make sense of their suffering.[17] This widespread historical documentation of the Siege even as it was happening demonstrates the inhabitants’ recognition for the moment’s historical dimension.[18] War provoked drastic shifts in peoples’ dispositions and practices with regard to their interaction with their surroundings;[19] Leningrad, with its legacy as a central setting to major events in both the Russian and Soviet historical narratives, enabled this shift to take full effect, resulting in a fundamental self-realization among its people as actors in history. While Leningraders drew on their collective experiences under siege, they engaged in memory-producing activities on mostly personal terms; these individual experiences were often then shared and publicized, “to endow private loss with public recognition and meaning.”[20] Despite the prevalence of personal-oriented activities, some individuals came together to construct memorials and make commemorations, beginning in the first year of the siege.[21] However, one of the most notable practices that Leningraders made during the siege in efforts to discern meaning of their plight was the keeping of diaries, a phenomenon that has come under detailed study by historians. Facilitated by encouragement from the Soviet state to keep diaries and other autobiographical writings,[22] the besieged inhabitants of the city maintained a “historicist mindset.”[23] These practices gave people a chance to consider their surroundings and the existing historical narrative permeating Leningrad.[24] For Leningraders, diary writing embodied the means to reflect and recognize the history occurring around them in a personal basis, resulting in a broad range of firsthand interpretations of the Siege. Despite this wide variety of representations, a common theme in many diaries of Leningrad’s inhabitants was the “rediscovery of urban beauty.”[25] The condition of war initiated a search in the city’s past; the legacy of Peter the Great was considered and coexisted alongside the siege experience.[26] Writers and artists were inspired by historical imagery and some interpreted the city during siege as an “unreal artifact” in comparison to prewar Soviet Leningrad.[27] In their vivid descriptions of hardship and hunger, many diarists reflected on parallels between the Siege and Leningrad in 1919 during the Civil War.[28] Diaries and other such “small stories” written during the Siege demonstrate individual engagement with a pre-existing historical narrative into which the author incorporated themselves. Such accounts, when set in comparison with one another, reveal a shared sense of deep tragedy,[29] thus indicating the emergence of collective memory. The Leningrader’s self-contextualization resulted in the production of a myriad of material that scholars have identified as primary sources in their studies of the Siege. As historians have increasingly turned to studying the human element behind the Leningrad Blockade,[30] authors like Lisa Kirschenbaum have shown that these sources demonstrate the formation of a collective memory among those who would become the survivors of the Siege. All of these memory-producing practices were closely and directly informed by the situation in which Leningraders found themselves during the Siege. A complex combination of factors ranging from the day-to-day experiences of the city’s inhabitants under bombardment from the German army, the pre-existing historical narrative that the city maintained, and pressing reality of starvation affecting the millions of Leningraders, played an important role in the construction of the cultural environment.[31] That circumstance served as both contextual setting for memory-producing activities and as an object to relate to for Leningraders, who often drew meaning from the “stories of the so-called Leningrad epic.”[32] Finding meaning in setting themselves within a historical narrative was the primary reason behind individual’s engagement in activities like diary-keeping, reconstructing the landscape in various artistic representations, and private investigations and research of history.[33] Polina Barskova’s 2010 journal article investigates how the city itself was understood during the war, exploring aesthetics, portrayal, and self-reflection; she determines that despite the intense physical and psychological trauma of everyday life, Leningraders reveled in aesthetic pleasure in a “response to the beauty of their environment.”[34] The city’s inhabitants identified both peril and beauty in their lives under siege;[35] this interplay of images manifests in the survivors’ accounts, as people hoped for, as Lisa Kirschenbaum identifies, “promises of rebirth and redemption.”[36] In the documentation of life during the Siege, people looked for any quality of beauty in city, to contrast with the immense pain of everyday life;[37] such moments were captured and recorded in a multitude of diaries and other autobiographical texts. State officials and Party infrastructure emboldened the population to see local events occurring within the siege as heroic and worthy of historical record.[38] Therefore, in producing commemorative material during and after the Siege, Leningraders recognized themselves and their personal stories as actors in the established “Leningrad epic.”[39] The situation and longstanding history of the city played a central role in many people’s representations of their circumstances. The wide variety of practices where the Soviet people realized themselves in a historically significant moment can be characterized as channels through which individual memory was formed. Leningrad’s impact is an essential catalyst to initiating this formation process, since its already-in-place status as a national symbol directly connected the individual interpretations of the collective experience to each other, to the city, and to the nation. A merging of these ideas was facilitated during commemoration initiatives. Equating individuals’ experiences with those of the city and the nation was a commonality in many state-led memorials.[40] Kirschenbaum finds that “Although official commemorations of the siege ‘romanticized’ their everyday experiences, Leningraders nonetheless recognized themselves and their personal stories in the state’s productions.”[41] Mirroring the efforts of the state to connect personal experiences to national struggle as a means of creating emotional authenticity,[42] the survivors the Siege also sought to make such connections so that they could make sense of their own suffering. The process of merging their personal experiences with those of the city and the nation was conducted through Leningraders’ keeping of diaries and the creation of artistic representations of the circumstances of the Siege. Such productions have then been used by historians as evident of memory; this characterization is appropriate because the practices of documenting directly engaged with the past and the present in a historical sense. Only Leningrad’s monolithic status as a place essential to the Russian historical narrative provided the inhabitants the ability to fully establish themselves within that narrative, prompted by the shared experiences under siege conditions. The effect of the Siege of Leningrad on collective memory in the Soviet Union cannot be overstated. Facing some of the most horrifying conditions for more than two years, the people of the city engaged in commemorative projects and memory-producing activities. In doing so they relied upon a pre-existing historical basis as they set their experiences in relation to the past to events across history yet united by place led to the realization of self in a historical narrative. Kirschenbaum summarizes The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad in stating that historians “can trace the fallout of war through survivors’ long-term efforts as individuals and as a community to live with and make sense of their memories – in part by constructing and assimilating consoling myths, in part by adapting myths to the difficult circumstances of postwar and post-Soviet life.”[43] Determining that how people remembered the Siege of Leningrad was both initiated by and situated in a broader memory narrative reliant upon the sense of Leningrad as a place proves that the Siege constituted a fulcrum around which collective memory hinged. Notes [1] Noah Krasman, “The Paradox of Genocide in Modern Russia: Evolving Narratives of the Siege of Leningrad During the ‘Great Patriotic Operation’” in Journal of Genocide Research 25 no. 3-4 (2023), 403. [2] David M. Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 470. [3] Alexis Peri, “Revisiting the Past: History and Historical Memory during the Leningrad Blockade,” in The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 38 (2011), 127. [4] See Lisa A. Kirschenbaum’s The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) for a such a work. [5] Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 103. [6] Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad, 459. [7] Richard Bidlack and Nikita Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, 1941-1944: A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 17-18. [8] Peri, “Revisiting the Past,” 108-109, 122, 127. [9] Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 14-15. [10] Kirschenbaum, 14. [11] Krasman, “The Paradox of Genocide,” 407. [12] Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 3. [13] Kirschenbaum, 6. [14] Kirschenbaum, 7. [15] Kirschenbaum, 1. [16] Peri, “Revisiting the Past,” 106. [17] Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 40. [18] Yvonne Pörzgen, “Siege Memory - Besieged Memory? Heroism and Suffering in St Petersburg Museums dedicated to the Siege of Leningrad,” in Museum & Society 14: 3 (November 2016), 416. [19] Jeffrey K. Hass, “Anchors, Habitus, and Practices Besieged by War: Women and Gender in the Blockade of Leningrad,” in Sociological Forum 32: 2 (June 2017), 254. [20] Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 79. [21] Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, “Commemorations of the siege of Leningrad,” in The Memory of Catastrophe, eds. Peter Gray and Kendrick Oliver (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 106. [22] Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 16 and Peri, “Revisiting the Past,” 112. [23] Peri, “Revisiting the Past,” 127. [24] Polina, Barskova, “The Spectacle of the Besieged City: Repurposing Cultural Memory in Leningrad, 1941-1944,” in Slavic Review 69: 2 (Summer 2010), 336. [25] Barskova, “The Spectacle,” 336 and Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 15. [26] Barskova, “The Spectacle,” 343. [27] Barskova, 346. [28] Peri, “Revisiting the Past,” 116, 119-121. [29] Cynthia Simmons, and Nina Perlina, Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), 210 [30] Aleksandr N. Chistikov, “Revisiting the Leningrad Blockade,” in Russian Studies in History 52: 2 (Fall 2013), 4. [31] Peri, “Revisiting the Past,” 110 [32] Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, “Nothing Is Forgotten: Individual Memory and the Myth of the Great Patriotic War,” in Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe, eds. Frank Beiss and Robert G. Moeller (New York, 2010), 69. [33] Peri, “Revisiting the Past,” 106 and 129. [34] Barskova, “The Spectacle,” 330-331. [35] Barskova, 335. [36] Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 28. [37] Barskova, “The Spectacle,” 355. [38] Barskova 78. [39] Kirschenbaum, “Commemorations of the siege,” 107. [40] Kirschenbaum, 111 and 115. [41] Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 96. [42] Kirschenbaum, “Commemorations of the siege,” 106. [43] Kirschenbaum, The Legacy, 297.
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