‘bloody unpleasant to
Leningrad’s rationing system operated similarly to the Gulag’s. Though articulated as giving to each according to his needs, in practice it tended to preserve (just) the lives of those vital to the city’s defence — soldiers and industrial workers — and condemn office workers, old people, the unemployed and children to death. When rationing was introduced in mid-July, initial allocations were the same as those for Muscovites — a generous 800 grams of bread daily for manual workers, 600 grams for office workers and 400 grams for children and the unemployed, plus adequate amounts of meat, fats, cereals or macaroni, and sugar. Astonishingly, the city soviet did not reduce the ration until 2 September, almost a fortnight after the direct railway line to Moscow had been cut. At Pavlov’s insistence, the first reduction was followed by another ten days later, to 500 grams of bread for manual workers, 300 for office workers, 250 for dependants and 300 for children. To make up for the drop, rations of fat and sugar were simultaneously increased, with hindsight a terrible mistake. ‘Looking back’, Pavlov admitted later, ‘it may be said that the fats ration, most clearly, and the sugar ration, should not have been increased in September. The approximately 2,500 tonnes of sugar and 600 tonnes of fats expended in September and October. . would have been extremely valuable in December.’ At the time, he added, nobody imagined that the city would remain cut off for that long.17
At its lowest, after a final cut on 20 November, the ration fell to 250 grams of bread per day for the 34 per cent of the civilian population classed as manual workers, and 125 grams (three thin slices) for everybody else, plus derisory quantities of meats and fats. For the lower category cardholders, this was officially the equivalent of 460 calories per day — less than a quarter of the 2,000–2,500 per day the average adult requires to maintain weight. Even these 460 calories were only the official figure: in reality bread, as we have seen, was seriously adulterated with ‘fillers’, meat disappeared, and there were days on which no rations were distributed at all. Today’s nutritionists, who use siege survivors to study the long-term effects of foetal and infant malnutrition, estimate that just taking account of ‘fillers’ the real number was closer to 300 calories per day.18 Had the second ration cut of 12 September been made just six days earlier, Pavlov later admitted, nearly 4,000 tons of flour would have been saved, and the final ration cut avoided.19
The allotments were also deadly in their crudeness, particularly as regards older children and adolescents. Children under twelve all fell into the same category, meaning that an eleven-year-old received no more than a toddler. From twelve to fourteen they were classed as ‘dependants’, even if in practice working and despite their fast-developing bodies’ more than adult needs. A child turning twelve between the two ration cuts of 12 September and 1 October thus found that his or her bread ration actually dropped, from 300 grams per day to 250. The classifications, Pavlov admitted, were ‘unjustified’, but ‘the situation made it impossible to feed them better’.20 Equally unfairly classed as ‘dependants’ were non-working mothers, upon whom fell the physical burdens of queuing at bread stores, bartering and hauling fuel and water. Tellingly, ‘dependants’ were also allotted fewer non-food necessities: they received one box of matches, for example, as compared to workers’ two. The nickname for the dependant’s card was the
Diversion of rations from the productive to the unproductive was prevented by rules forbidding workers from taking food home to their families. An army surgeon, who had been forced to move into the hospital where she worked and thus leave her elderly mother living alone, asked permission to take home some of her own relatively generous ration. The request was turned down, but she nonetheless managed to smuggle her mother food via an orderly. ‘I was ordered to report to the commissar’, she wrote later, ‘and he attempted to persuade me that I had no right to undermine my health, to deprive myself of food. I agreed, didn’t protest, but told him that I couldn’t do otherwise, that my sacred responsibility was to save my mother.’22 Though in many workplaces, as here, the rules were not strictly enforced, in others employees’ bags were searched as they left the premises.
The authorities did make some exceptions to their ruthless utilitarianism. On hearing that many of the city’s elderly scholars were dying, Zhdanov is said to have personally ordered that a list be drawn up of the most prominent and that they be sent extra food parcels by municipal trade organisations.23 One beneficiary was the artist Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, who on 20 January 1942 was astonished to open her door to a woman in a white coat carrying a box filled with butter, meat, flour, sugar and dried peas. ‘This is Comrade Zhdanov’, she wrote in her diary, ‘who has noticed my age and taken it upon himself to send me food. I calculate that it amounts to roughly what one would get in a month on a worker’s card.’24 The delivery fed her and her maid Nyusha for ten days, but did not soften her attitude to the system as a whole. The dependant’s card, she thought, was a death sentence and a ‘disgrace’, designed to rid Leningrad of old people and housewives — all ‘superfluous mouths’.25
The biggest, inevitable, weakness of the rationing system was its vulnerability to corruption. The most romanticised Soviet accounts do not admit this at all, picturing the entire city, save for a few weak souls and saboteurs, as selflessly devoted to resisting the enemy. Even the more realistic ones, such as Pavlov’s (published during Khrushchev’s short-lived ‘Thaw’), greatly understate the level of breakdown, detailing the measures taken to prevent forgery and ration-card fiddles on the part of the general population, but glossing over theft and bribe- taking within the food distribution network itself. Though ‘egotists’ and ‘locusts’ attempted to undermine the system, Pavlov concludes,
the measures taken by the city Party organisation made it possible to protect the population from speculators, swindlers and spongers. The inhabitants’ confidence in the established system of food distribution was maintained. There was little food, but each individual knew that his ration would not be given to anyone else. He would receive whatever he was supposed to receive.26
This picture, as both private and official records make clear, is far too rosy. Leningraders did not receive what they were supposed to receive — on the contrary, they queued for hours in the dark and cold, often to get far short of the designated ration, or nothing at all. Nor did they believe that the system was fair: every diarist complains of corrupt bosses and rosy-cheeked canteen workers and shopgirls; every diarist describes wangling extra rations themselves when possible, and trading on the black market.
The Party files, too, are stuffed with corruption cases. The chairman and deputy chairman of the Petrograd district soviet, one note records, instead of ‘maintaining iron order’ arranged regular off-ration food distributions for themselves and colleagues. ‘Comrade Ivanov, moreover, converted his office into a bedroom for himself and his colleague Comrade Volkova, thus laying himself open to accusations of having sexual relations with a subordinate.’27 There were similar goings-on in the Primorsky district Party Committee, twelve of whose members, led by its First Secretary and the district soviet chair, took special deliveries direct from the local Canteen Trust. ‘Before the 7 November [Revolution Day] festivities’, an NKVD investigator reported,
the Trust issued the district committee with ten kilos of chocolate and eight kilos of caviar and tinned goods. On the 6th the committee telephoned the Trust demanding more chocolate. . Altogether, 4,000 roubles-worth of food were misappropriated in November. . Canteen no. 13 had cigarettes for all the committee members — 1000 packs — but Secretary Kharytonov told the canteen not to hand them out, saying ‘I will smoke them all myself’.
Nikita Lomagin, the historian who has worked most extensively in Petersburg’s security service archive, concludes from the fact that the report was not made until the end of December that the police had previously been taking a cut themselves. None of the Party officials involved, he also points out, lost his job.28
Instead of punishing dishonest officials, the leadership concentrated on preventing the public from cheating the system. One of Pavlov’s first moves was to clamp down on unauthorised and duplicate ration cards. Record- keeping, he discovered on arrival in the city in September, had failed to keep up with the enormous population movements of the past two months, allowing Leningraders to take out cards in the names of friends and relatives who had gone into evacuation or to the front. Stricter checks and penalties cut the number of cards issued for October to 2.42 million, down 97,000 from the previous month. It was not enough, and on 10 October the city soviet passed a resolution, proposed by Zhdanov, to re-register all cards. Between 12 and 18 October
