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The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad

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Few events in the annals of modern history compare to the saga of the terrifying siege of Leningrad for almost three years by the German Wehrmacht during World War Two. In this classic historical work, "The 900 Days" written by long-time New York Times correspondent and editor Harrison Salisbury, the incredible toll in terms of blood, sweat and tears of the millions of Russian protagonists trapped by the Nazis in the city is told. The story is told in such a graphic and moving fashion that the individuals involved are portrayed from a common sense, human perspective, in terms of describing breathing, struggling individuals locked into a living nightmare, each of them having to make a titanic effort day after day just to endure the hardships and survive.

The scale of the siege itself boggles the mind; some three million residents and soldiers were encircled and entrapped at the beginning of the Nazi incursion into Russia in Operation Barbarossa, intensifying with a ruthless German offensive in early October of 1941 that literally strangled the lifeline for food and critical supplies from the embattled urban area. Of those trapped, almost half succumbed, and most of these fatalities were in a relatively brief period of time, commencing with the events of October 1941 and climaxing in early April of 1942. People starved, froze, drowned, were run over by tanks, walked into mine fields, succumbed to a wide range of diseases, were murdered by German soldiers, and sometimes were caught in artillery fire. In all, almost one and one half million people were lost during the siege.

Yet in the midst of all this immense suffering and the degraded conditions that forced many to the brink of extinction, the people of Leningrad consistently fought back, fighting environmental conditions, temperatures that dipped below 30 degrees below zero, with no heat, no light, little or no food or water. Yet the fighting on the front went on, supported by the inhabitants, who did everything from digging ditches to helping to care for the wounded in the midst of their own daily struggles to survive. In this instance, they didn't merely endure; in fact they prevailed against incredible odds. In the final analysis, it was the German army that was destroyed.

The scope of this achievement seems to be little appreciated today. And while Salisbury traces the causes in the tragedy of Leningrad in Stalin's sectarian governmental policies that ultimately played into Hitler's plans for capturing the city, he also describes the incredible contributions of a cross-section of the citizenry of the city, including artists, factory workers, soldiers, teachers, housewives, children, writers, and others engaged in the common daily struggle to survive without ever ceding the ground or the war to the foe. Even more impressive is his unflinching attention to detail, and his retelling of the final coup-de-grace delivered by Stalin, jealous and politically fearful of the genuine heroes made by the siege, who then arranged to charge, convict and execute all the principals of the city's campaign against the Germans based on trumped up charges of treason. This was one of the first books to deal with the levels of Soviet suffering and contribution to the war effort, and it has been praised quite consistently by readers and critics alike. I can recommend this book without reservation.
Enjoy!

This is still the definitive work about the human tragedy of the Blockade of Leningrad. The background and military strategy are interesting and important, but the chronicle of the civilian suffering is gut-wrenching and unforgetable. It's been more than a dozen years since I read this, but certain scenes still remain with me: The diary of a little girl whose entire family starved to death. The heroic Young Pioneers and Komsomols hauling water by hand from the frozen Neva to the bakeries. The meager rations of the "bread", baked from sawdust and nearly undigestable. The poet who made a "meat jelly" from her neighbor's leather briefcase. The elderly man who was driven by starvation to eat his beloved pet cat, then afterward hanged himself in his home. The dead, frozen in their beds where they lay and in the streets where they fell, pulled on children's sleds by emaciated relatives, stacked like logs at the cemetery gate, where the ground was too frozen to dig. The silent, cold-eyed "cannibals" in the market selling the ubiquitous ground-meat patties which buyers hoped were dog, rat, or horsemeat. The desperate and dangerous Road of Life over the frozen Lake Ladoga, established and traveled under fire... Only the extraordinary endurance and efforts of the citizens saved Leningrad. Hitler's plan was to erradicate the city and its people. Stalin was perfectly willing to sacrifice them. St. Petersburg still bears the scars from the seige that lasted nearly three years. "Let no one forget. Let nothing be forgotten." Ironically, the human tragedy appears to be repeating itself today in Grozny.

I wasn't nearly so impressed by this work as I had expected and hoped to be. The theme is extraordinary, the two great Western totalitarian powers square off over the fate of a city of enormous historical significance (it was the seat of the Russian Revolution) and geographical significance (it was either the first or last Western city depending on which direction you're facing).

The book might better have been titled "Scenes from 900 Days" and if it were titled that or, better, written with the intention of being that, it might have been a great book. But the book aspired to be history and, because of that, it ought to have been more coherent. The reader gets a lot of the deprivation and misery among the ever dwindling Leningrad residents. And, in describing that, Salisbury is at his best. His descriptions are passionate and human without being mawkish. However, the military element of the siege (an important part -- if the Germans hadn't brought guns and artillery and all the other accoutrements of war along, the situation would have been more than just a littledifferent) is badly handled. We know that, at times, the Germans and Russians fought in places like Mga, but Salisbury rarely makes it clear why or how. The geography of the region remains a complete mystery. The two included maps were of little help and Salisbury wasn't particularly interested in describing the area or the significance of particular geographical features. There is precious little description of combat and either none or almost none of battlefields, strategies, tactics, and the like. The manner in which the Germans laid the siege is all but absent, so it becomes virtually impossible to figure out how the Russians would have or could have lifted it.

Moreover, he explains that Stalinist-era Soviet incompetence, mendacity, and villainy exacerbated or even caused much of the Leningraders' suffering, but he never demonstrates how. It might, for example, have been nice to know exactly how food and basic supplies were received and distributed among Leningraders, what the exact policies were, what the bureaucracy charged with that task was like and how it behaved, but all that is left vague. I got to know that Leningraders were given increasingly austere rations on which to survive, but that's about all. The political and social structure of the city is likewise left vague. We are apprised of the political tensions among the ambitious political elites of the USSR, but the treatment is too superficial.

His characters (and he draws too much on the experience of a group of writers, presumably because they were the people to whom he had access) are often flat and uninteresting. True, the historian doesn't always have the luxury of being able to play psychologist, but Salisbury rarely even seemed to make the attempt. Some of the players (Stalin, Andrei Zhdanov, and Marshal Zhukov) are well-enough known people that he could have provided a decent amount of insight into them and their motivations (history without some psychology tends to be about as interesting and as morally useful as literature without character development), and occasionally he did. The treatment of Beria and Malenkov is decent in this respect.

There are, to be sure, some well-written and engaging scenes. Salisbury has the journalist's flair of not being boring (but seldom rises above that level of high competence). The sections on the construction of the supply-railroad across Lake Lagoda is extremely good. As is his discussion of canibalism. The problem is that if his virtues are those of a journalist, so are his shortcomings. Too much of the book reads like news items or human interest stories. His eye is permanently fixed on the sorts of details that people would have wanted or needed to know immediately during the war (he has a fondness for describing with mathematical precision the amount of food each Leningrader got at certain points and the bureaucratic designations of military outfits -- the 291st infantry or whatever). And the historian needs details to be sure, he just needs better ones than these.

To be fair, the Soviet Union was a closed society and information about the siege must have been limited, both by official bureaucratic means and because, owing to the inculcation of contrary values and natural selection, candor ceased to be an attribute of the Russian character, if it ever was. Salisbury might have done the best he could with the limited resources he had. But that doesn't mean the book ought to be judged differently.

And it certainly wouldn't have been possible to provide every significant aspect of the siege in full detail (that seems to have become a virtual mantra among historians and history students). Still, he could have done a better job of picking the most important aspects and describing them in as much detail as he had time for. I honestly wish I could have liked the book better. It's about an important part of 20th centory history by a writer who strikes me (from this one encounter) as perfectly decent and likable. Sadly, that wasn't an option. He deserves credit for taking on such an ambitious project, and the book is worth reading if for no other reason than it describes such an important and awesome period in history (hence my giving it three stars -- it was certainly an above average book), but the final product was too uneven to be as great as one would hope it would be.

Having adopted two children from St. Petersburg orphanages and having twice visited the city in the past three years, I read this book from the perspective of an adoptive parent trying to gain a better understanding of the society and city my children came from. I was not disappointed. This well researched book tells the nearly forgotten tragic story of the people of Leningrad during what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War (WWII). It begins in great detail explaining Stalin's blunders before the war, which nearly allowed the Nazis to win a swift and easy victory. The bulk of the book of course recounts the stories of how a people, almost abandoned by its own country, coped with one of the most savage sieges of history. Finally, the book tells of the sad fate of many of the heroic survivors. The book does not try to tell the German perspective nor should it. By telling the stories of the victims we are more easily reminded of the horror of war and are less inclined to glorify aggression. The theme rather is taken from Leningrad poet, Olga Berggolts , "Let no one forget, let nothing be forgotten." For those of us not used to Russian names, places or war heroes, it can be difficult to keep track of how the war and the siege are progressing in the book. Poets, writers, composers and artists may seem a bit over represented in the book, but the reader should remember that since the book is non-fiction, the author had to rely on real accounts of what happened. These accounts are much more likely to have been written about the more famous. On the other hand, having been to St. Petersburg, it's hard to find someone there who is not at least a poet, writer, composer or artist at heart. So the author might have the right mix of artist/not artist accounts in the book after all.

Salisbury gave us a monumental work of history: not just in scope, but in depth. This is a book which entwines the epic story with the human story, basing both on the kind of scholarship too few writers are dedicated enough to accomplish. I wrote a well-received history on the early satellites (The First Space Race, Texas A&M, 2004) which I was proud of, but I can't resist the feeling that Salisbury did as much research for every chapter as I did for an entire book.
As always with a well-written history, there are lessons which are important for our own times. The most striking example comes at the beginning of the book, where the reader learns the German invasion of Russia was anything but the complete surprise Russan leaders claimed it was. The German preperations were too large to hide, and all kinds of intelligence, even exact dates, made it into the briefings given to the Russian leadership. But Stalin had his own view of the way things were, and anything to the contrary was ignored or disparaged. The Russians were also victimized by a system in which initiative was dangerous: military and civilian officials who read the tea leaves and tried to take some preparatory action on their own were slapped down. Salisbury shows us, in sometimes-agonizing detail, how these factors resulted in what may have been the most brutal, dehumanizing, and costly battle in history. I agree with some other reviewers that more maps and photographs would be useful, but that's a minor quibble.
This book is a breathtaking achivement.

Straight up, the Siege of Leningrad lasted either 872 or 880 days, depending on whether you begin the count from the German capture of Mga or Shlissel'burg, not 900 days. I guess "The 880 Days" didn't sound so good as a book title, but in any case, deliberately mis-labeling a historical event is not a good way to write a history of that event. Harrison E. Salisbury's The 900 Days was a sensation when it first appeared in the West in 1969 since it was really the first major book in English that covered the epic siege of Leningrad in any detail. Furthermore, compared to the white-washed Soviet histories of the Great Patriotic War which attempted to conceal that over one million civilians died in Leningrad during the siege, Salisbury's book was brutally frank and honest. I remember reading this book in the early 1970s and considered it quite good. However, The 900 Days has not aged well and now nearly forty years after it first appeared, the value of this book has been reduced by over-reliance on too narrow a source base and the author's acceptance of Soviet-era falsehoods. When I re-read this book recently, I saw a journalistic account that is riddled in places with factual inaccuracies or mistakes, some of which it is clear that the author never bothered to check. Also, The 900 Days, like David Glantz's more recent books on Leningrad only focuses on the Soviet perspective, while failing to address the German or Finnish sides in any detail. Furthermore, the book really only covers the first year of the siege in any depth; the remaining two years are glossed over quickly in the final chapter. Nevertheless, The 900 Days is very well written in parts and it remains a `classic' in conveying the suffering endured by the people of Leningrad. Yet given its limitations, the book should now be viewed as an introduction to the siege, rather than a definitive history.

The 900 Days is divided into five parts. Part I, "The Night Without End," should have been called "the introduction without end," because the author spends an interminable 130 pages - nearly a quarter of the book - describing events before the German invasion. It is particularly annoying in the manner in which the author describes how a host of minor characters heard about rumors of war approaching and his depiction of Leningrad as a sun-filled `paradise' with women wearing diamonds and children eating ice-cream. No Stalinist-repression or Gulags here, please. Everything was happy, happy before the war. Part II, "The Summer War," comprises about 140 pages and is easily the best section in the book, detailing the German advance toward Leningrad and the desperate Soviet measures to erect hasty defenses. The role of Leningrad Party boss Andrei Zhdanov is particularly well covered (he had already been exorcised from post-war Soviet histories, so Salisbury's account may remain the definitive one on this character) and Salisbury is at pains to point out that Zhukov's brief role at Leningrad was less vital that the standard "the General-who-never-lost-a-battle" histories depict. Salisbury does mention German plans and actions from time to time, but mostly at high-level. Soviet units and some commanders are mentioned - the role of engineer Bychevsky is interesting - but there are very few front-line accounts. There are a significant number of factual errors - such as the frequent claim that the German paratroopers were frequently used in airborne drops in this sector (there were frequent rumors of this in July-August 1941 because of the German airborne attack on Crete in May 1941, but the author failed to `weed out' wartime rumors), that entire German units were destroyed, etc. He claims that the German commander for Leningrad was going to be "SS General Knut" when there was no such officer in the Wehrmacht or SS. At least Salisbury admits - unlike Soviet sources - that it isn't clear why the Germans failed to continue the offensive in September 1941 when Leningrad's defenses were crumbling.

Part III, "Leningrad in Blockade," covers the German encirclement of the city and also is well written, although marred by a number of factual errors. Part IV, "The Longest Winter," is really the heart of the book and this is the section that most readers will remember, with all its somber details about a civilian population starving to death en masse. The final section, "Breaking the Iron Ring," is only 50 pages long and covers the period summer 1942 to January 1944 in a twinkling (and skips over several Soviet disastrous offensives on the Volkhov). By this point, the author appeared to be running out of steam (or sources) and events are described briskly. In conclusion, the author estimates that one million or more civilians died in Leningrad during the siege, marking it as one of the most horrific experiences ever inflicted on a city(comparing it to Hiroshima and the 1870 siege of Paris).

First and foremost, The 900 Days is a journalistic account and the author has a predilection for `human interest' type anecdotes over narrative history, although some is provided. The author's focus on a group of Soviet `poets' (it seems like every other person is described as a poet) and `intellectuals' continues ad naseum throughout the book, but the author neglects that most of these favored `peacocks' were approved by the party (while other writers went to the Gulag). All in all, the 900 Days remains a classic of sorts and it remains the best depiction of the human tragedy in Leningrad, but as more historical material comes to light, its failings are becoming more evident with time.

It is a great book on a not-so-well-known subject. A really gripping depiction of the struggle and suffering in besieged Leningrad. Starting at a rather slow (read: too slow) pace, as the author presents the political situation before the German attack on the Soviet Union, and events leading to Leningrad's encirclement, the book proceeds to very graphic, horrifying description of the life under the siege. Road to Life accross Ladoga Lake, desperate attempts to feed the city's population, cases of cannibalism are just a few highlights of this great book. However, the book never looked at these events from the other site. Germans are just shadows looming over the city. We never got a chance to hear from them, to find out what it was like from their perspective. Another problem with the perspective: author makes it look like Leningrad was populated in 90% by artists. Writers, painters, composers, and their likes, crowd the pages of the book leaving little room for ordinary people. With all that said, it is a great book, very readable, and, at least to me, very enlightening.

If "war is hell," as General Sherman said, then at the innermost circle of hell you'll find the 900-day siege of Leningrad (now renamed St. Petersburg). It was, by all accounts, the deadliest battle in human history. More than 300,000 Soviet soldiers perished, plus uncounted thousands of Germans. Inside the blockade zone, an estimated 1.2 million civilians slowly starved to death as Hitler and Stalin used the city like a giant chess piece on the Eastern Front.

The late Harrison Salisbury captured this epic struggle better than anyone else in "The 900 Days," a book every student of 20th century history should read at least once. He begins the story with Leningrad at peace during the balmy "white nights" of June 1941. Culture is flourishing throughout the city. Composers, writers, musicians and artists are busy at work. Families are vacationing on the Baltic coast. Meanwhile, Stalin and his minions are in a massive state of denial about the coming Nazi assault, despite dozens of warnings and signs.

After the first few fascinating chapters, "The 900 Days" can be slow going as Salisbury details the military intrigue and paranoia that decimated the Soviet leadership in the years leading up to the siege, which yielded tragic consequences for Russian defenses in 1941 and 1942. If you're primarily interested in the human side of the story, skip to Part IV on page 393.

The emotional core of this book is the immense civilian catastrophe that took place during the 2.5 year siege. Despite heroic attempts by local citizens and Young Communist brigades, the city became a slow-motion killing zone without nearly enough food, fuel or even fresh water to sustain the population. People resorted to the most desperate and barbaric measures to stay alive. (Warning: Not for children or the squeamish.) Compassion and brutality roamed the streets simultaneously.

Ultimately, the siege was broken in January 1944, but not before Leningrad was largely destroyed. Stalin gets much of the blame for failing to evacuate more civilians earlier on. But the real lesson of "The 900 Days" is that human suffering has no limit in times of war. Let's not forget that before we start another one.

Final note: This book is relatively short on maps, photos and diagrams. Some courageous publisher should republish the book with a complete set of photos from the period, many of which are available at the St. Petersburg library.

Reading the great new WWII novel, The Triumph and the Glory" triggered in me an interest in World War II, especially the fighting on the Eastern Front. I asked around and was told Salisbury's "900 Days" was one of the best accounts of the Leningrad fighting, and after reading it agree, with the slight complaint that it concentrates almost wholly on the situation inside the besieged city. It is more a story of the citizenry of Leningrad and their ordeal than in the military aspects of the siege.

The first part of the book is fantastic in its description of the time leading up to Barbarossa, the simple shock the Soviets had and the almost refusal to believe by Stalin.

The first half of the book I would give 5 stars. The detail is almost overwhelming. If one is not familiar with cyrilic and has at least a rough grasp of the Russian language, it is very difficult to keep all the names of generals, party officials, and city administrators separated. A few more maps would have been better, to help the reader get a better grasp of the situation described. I constantly found myslef going back to the maps at the beginning, trying to figure out specifics, and giving up because many of the places mentioned in the text were not on the map. However, the portrayal of the Soviet military structure is vivid and gives one a good image of what happened. The description of the Tallinn disaster was exceptionally good. The first half resembles the 25 years he spent researching the events.

The second half of the book is lacking. The description of the starvation is very gruesome and disturbing, which is accurate historically. The timeline, which is fairly orderly at the beginning, takes a nose dive about half way through. Here, it seems that Salisbary was finding new information as he wrote the book, and including it. Therefore, events are presented in random order. Then the book just stops, and says that the city was still in blockade and then the war was over.

Some of the other reviewers have accurately described the over emphasis on the plight of writers, poets, and playwrights. The ordinary citizen is not represented, nor is the average soldier given adequate attention.

The German side of the engagement is almost non-existant. Beevor's book on Stalingrad is much better at describing the events. But as for Leningrad, Salisbary's book is still the best I have read on the subject.