Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women's Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose by C. Simmons N. Perlina (review)

Abstract

766 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 a very minor point and the absence of fulltestimoniesin no way detractsfrom what is an exceptional piece of researchand an importantcontributionto the history of the Second World War, Polish history, women's history and the debates about national and gender identity. Department ofCentral andEastEuropean Studies K. TURTON University ofGlasgow Simmons, C. and Perlina, N. (eds). Writingthe Siegeof Leningrad.Women's Diaries,Memoirs,andDocumentary Prose.Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies, University of PittsburghPress, Pittsburgh,PA, 2002. XliV + 242 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Index. [24.50 (paperback). THE siege of Leningradwas a horrificevent, an epic test of human endurance. With supply and escape routes cut off by the German and Finnish armies in September I94I, and temperatures dropping to minus forty degrees Fahrenheit , up to one million of the city's inhabitants starved or froze to death. Columns of trucks began to crawl cautiously, under bombardment, across frozen LakeLagoda at the end ofJanuary I942. Food came in, childrenwent out, but for many it was too late. The firstwinter was the worst, but it was I943 before life in the city reverted to a 'normal' war-time existence, and German bombardment ended only inJanuary I944. The siege has been eloquently describedand analysedby both Russian and western authors. Until recently, however, both were hampered. Western writers could ask probing questions not permitted their Soviet colleaguesforexample , whetherevacuationwas given a low priority but had no access to archives; Russian authors had to follow changes in the political line on militarystrategyand the significanceof the population's sacrifice.There was little scope for either side to let the survivorstell theirstory. Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina set out to redress the balance by providing us with a collection of women's diaries (written at the time), memoirs (writtensubsequentlyortranscribedfrominterviews)and documentary prose (or fiction). Their focus on women's writing is prompted by the dominance of women in the civilianpopulation, theirshoulderingof multiple tasks, and the effects upon them, as women. Simmons and Perlina are also interested in how women write of their experiences, how they 'write themselves'. The meat of the book is excerpts from the diaries of nine very different,well educated women; memoirs or interviewswith a slightlylarger number, mostly of a professionalbackground,and a smallselection of literary writings. For a student studying Russian history the book, with Bidlack's excellent foreword, will serve well either as an introduction to the weightier accounts of the siege, or as adding a furtherdimension to existing historiesor literatureof the siege. It complements other writing on the role of women in WorldWar II, and it adds to the growing number of translationsof women's diariesand memoirs of the Soviet period. The quality of diaries/memoirs, in any collection, varies and the search for a cross-section of diarists/respondents inevitably produces more and less REVIEWS 767 memorable pieces. Readers of Soviet diaries and memoirs will not find any startlingdiscoverieshere (why should they?)but some catch the imagination. Kostrovitskaia'sdescription of watching, through the window, as a group of sailormusicians weakens and dies, is eery, and Veshenkova'sstory of a child, locked in the room each day, waiting for her mother'sreturnin the evening, is a fine piece of writing. In both cases the element of being trapped inside, of looking through windows, is critical.Windows are a recurringmotif. But the compilers leave us to do our own analysis. They tell us that they opted to organize the materials using genre and time as dividers - 'in order to foreground [. . .] the nuances of context, the shiftof context in time, and the conscious individual attempt to explore and interpret history through fictionalization' (p. xxxiii) - but we are left to interpret the significance of these dividers. What should interest a historian, and why? Are diaries and memoirs always so different?Fiction and memoir? What if we read them as one and they are another?What do these materials tell us in answer to such questions?Here areplenty of questionsfor students. The issue of women's writing is underexplored. To discover how the siege impacted upon theirperception of themselves as women, and to observe how gender differencesinfluenced theirwriting, we need a wider perspective. Did the siege, or World War...