Children’s Memories of the Leningrad Blockade in the Materials of the Central State Archive of the Udmurt Republic

Abstract

The article offers the previously unpublished memoirs of eleven Leningrad residents who were children during the German blockade of the city. All of them were collected in 1998-1999 by Nina Aleksandrovna Koroleva, and are today kept in her collection in the Central State Archive of the Udmurt Republic. After the war, Nina Aleksandrovna came to live in Udmurtia, where she started to record memories about wartime. Conventionally, her documents can be divided into two groups. The first includes the memories of those who were evacuated to Udmurtia during the Great Patriotic War. The second group consists of memories of those who ended up in the republic after the end of the war. All documents are preserved in the author's edition. The memoirs reflect childhood impressions of the siege period. Their authors share their feelings from the beginning of the blockade, and report details of their daily life during the siege; they also reveal the coping strategies of the respective families. Descriptions of the labor conducted by children invite for conclusions about their contribution to the Soviet victory. Very emotional are the reports about the lifting of the blockade. Some memoirs contain details of the evacuation from Leningrad to the mainland. From the perspective of the history of everyday life, the publication of these memoirs expands our knowledge about the Great Patriotic War and, in particular, about the blockade of Leningrad.