The voice of hope of the besieged Leningrad Olga Bergholz - in the electronic sources of the Presidential Library

May 16, 2017, marks 107 years since the birth of Olga Bergholz - a woman who was called the voice of hope of the besieged Leningrad, a poet who became a symbol of the intrepid Russian spirit. There are the electronic copies of books by Olga Bergholz on the Presidential Library website: released in 1944 collected poems Leningrad, written in co-authorship with Georgy Makogonenko in 1945 play entitled They lived in Leningrad, as well as other materials dedicated to her life and work. In the near future, about 500 audio recordings of the programs of the famous blockade reporter Matvey Frolov, including a recording with the voice of Olga Bergholz, add to the Presidential Library stock.

The intense and honest poems from the very heart of the besieged Leningrad let the reader to see the life of the besieged city from inside:

Sled runners squeak and squeak without rest;

In saucepans on childish narrow sleds

Cyan blue water drifting by the Nevsky Prospect

Along with firewood, belongings, sick and dead.

Owing to these lines of Olga Bergholz, we can experience the mood of the city in these difficult years:

Death threat approaching Leningrad…

The nights are sleepless, any day is hard.

We don’t remember what are the tears,

What prayer stated for of fears.

In fact, there was the fear. But strong people with unbroken spirit coped with it and became the support for others, as happened with the fragile Leningrad poetess. “Even on the fourth day of bombing I’m not able to get rid of that sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, - wrote Olga Bergholz in her “Blockade diary,” published many decades after the war. - What a humiliating feeling - this physical fear… No, no, - how dare they? To throw a disruptive iron into the unarmed, defenseless people, and on top of it - to make it whistle while upcoming, so that everyone thinks: “This is for me” - and dies in advance. <…> Well - kill me, but do not frighten me, do not you dare to frighten me with that damn whistle, do not mess with me.”

Olga Bergholz from the lyrical heroine suddenly became a poet, personifying the fortitude of the besieged city. “Vera Ketlinskaya, who led the Leningrad branch of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1941, recalled how in the first days of the war Olenka, as everyone called her then, came to her, appearing as “a charming fusion of femininity and sweeping manner, sharp wit and childish naivety.” Unusually serious and organized, she asked Ketlinskaya where and what could she help with. She directed Bergholz at the disposal of the literary and dramatic editorial staff of the Leningrad Radio,” – according to Natalia Borisovna Rogova, the chief librarian of the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library, who appears in the public video lecturing of “Knowledge of Russia” series, dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the complete lifting of the siege of Leningrad.

The soft voice of the poetess became the voice of hope, the voice of Leningrad itself. Bergholz wrote and read her poems, so that they became a foothold for each listener. One of the friends of the poet Boris Kornilov - the ex-husband of the poetess - said “with her poems she was “outtalking” fired shells, keeping Leningrad out of trouble.” But the main thing is that Olga Bergholz inspired faith in people:

My friend, these bitter days we face

Disastrous misfortune

Yet we are not left alone with you,

That’s way a long sight better.

Today one of the streets of St. Petersburg bears the name of Olga Bergholz, and the granite slabs of the memorial Piskarevsky Cemetery “talk” to the residents and guests of the city in monumental in meaning words to the poetess:

Here lie Leningraders.

City residents - men, women, children.

Red Army soldiers are next to them.

With their very lives they were defending you, Leningrad,

The cradle of the revolution.

We can’t recount their noble names,

So many of them rest under the timeless protection of granite.

But you, audient to silent stones, are aware:

Nobody, nothing has been forgotten.