Blockade and occupation through the eyes of witnesses: the Presidential Library website features the diaries of blockade survivors

Personal diaries of Leningrad residents, which are part of book collections, have been digitized and made available on the website of the Presidential Library on the eve of the Day of complete liberation of the city from the Nazi blockade, celebrated on January 27.

Julia Hordikaynen’s book "Life in the occupation and in the early postwar years," describes in detail the life of a family during the war through the eyes of a child. In those terrible years she was a little girl living with her parents in Pushkin. The book was issued thanks to Julia Hordikaynen’ sister, Sophia Nuridzhanova. She wrote the preface of the book: "The Diary of my sister (mine was lost) – a diary of an ordinary girl. Its unquestionable advantage is an artless fixing everything that was happening to us, around us. "

At the beginning of the siege, September 26, Julia noted in her diary: "There is no foodstuff in the shops. Ration cards have been introduced..."

The diary also contains descriptions of the terrible minutes during the bombing: "...suddenly shells began to burst quite close, splinters fell all around. Dad told everyone to dress up and go down. This "bomb shelter" is located on the ground floor of our house... Whistling of the shells is extremely unpleasant: it seems that it would just break right here, under our noses, but it flies over."

About the endless bombings tells in colors Valentin Zvonarev’s book "Notes of a blockade survivor": "As a result of the September raid our apartment was seriously damaged. Now the southern tip of the main corridor ended not with a wall with doors opening to the front stairs, as it had been before, but with a huge ragged hole. Behind this hole in the stairwell, where a bomb fell, laid in ruins the grand staircase, which had come down."

The Presidential Library website also presents the "Diary of Zinaida Antonovna Ryzhkova", which contains a short recording of key events of the blockade. Among them, for example, there are lines written on January 19, 1944 about breaking the blockade, "Order on the breakthrough of the front south of Oranienbaum and near Pulkovo. Finnish Koyrovo, Krasnoye Selo, Duderhof, Peterhof are taken. We did not sleep until 1 o'clock. We drank to victory. Joyful mood." And here is the story of January 27, 1944: "Salute in honor of lifting the blockade of Leningrad! writes Zinaida Antonovna in her notebook. We watched it from the bank of the Neva. It was an unforgettable, deeply disturbing spectacle for us, Leningrad residents."

The Presidential Library collections include a large number of stories, life stories, memories of the blockade. They can be found on the pages of books and newspapers. There is also a large array of periodicals of the blockade era. In addition, the first national electronic library of Russia disposes of memories of Boris Piotrovsky, father of the current Director of the State Hermitage Museum. A prominent Russian historian, he had been at the head of the museum more than 25 years.

In the years of blockade, Boris Piotrovsky, like many scientists continued to work on his scientific work. He recalls: "In the House of Scientists, waiting for a meager lunch served by candlelight in our dark dining room, I met my old friends-historians, who had changed a lot, with faces and hands covered with soot from small stoves, but full of energy, making plans of their scientific works, despite the fact that many of them were on the verge of death."

The materials on the blockade are also available in the digital collection posted on the website of the Presidential Library. Documents, some of which were presented in the electronic form for the first time, evidence of the hardest days of life and heroism of Leningrad residents during the war. The collection includes ration cards of blockade years, mobilization orders, permits and other documents of the wartime.