Read Online Leningrad 1943: Inside a City Under Siege by Alexander Werth - Free Book Online
Authors: Alexander Werth
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shook their heads, some of them with a faint, slightly defiant smile.
There were ships on the Neva, anchoring in midstream, or moored to the granite side of the quay, opposite the long line of small half-deserted palaces. The ships were painted grey, a few naval craft among them, but mostly former cargo ships. Were they all being used for anti-aircraft batteries? On board, sailors of the Baltic Fleet were busy doing things. Where was the rest of the Baltic Fleet? Kronstadt, perhaps. But I preferred not to ask. And how much of the Fleet was left? Even less did I like to ask that. All I knew was that the Baltic Fleet had done wonders, but that in the early days of the war, in the Gulf of Riga, and at Tallinn, it had suffered many great losses through air bombardment. Today its submarines still continued to be active in the Baltic, and the naval marines, fighting on the Leningrad front, were among the toughest Russian troops. The Germans had an almost superstitious fear of these men who were reputed to be desperate characters, who preferred knifing Germans to any other form of slaughter. In 1917, the bourgeoisie regarded the sailors of the Baltic Fleet as a new variety of apache.
And true enough, there were many thugs among them – like the twelve of Blok’s poems – apostolic thugs which any Revolution not only produces but needs. They could look ruthless and frightening, and rather romantic. With that long forelock coming from under the sailor’s cap, worn at such a rakish angle, with their tattooed chests showing above their striped blue and white jerseys, and that devilish swagger of theirs, they drove all the dishonest women of Petrograd crazy and many an honest one too.
But the Baltic Fleet today was different. Much of the old swaggering tradition was still alive, but they were highly disciplined men now, with infinite devotion and a record of courage and self-sacrifice that matched the record of their southern comrades, the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and of the marines who fought and died at Sebastopol.
We drove in the car along the quay to the Summer Garden, over the little humped granite bridges across the Venetian-like Winter Canal and the Swan Canal, past the Winter Palace, with its now dirty-grey walls chipped by shell splinters, past the grey Marble Palace overlooking the vast Champ de Mars parade ground, now turned into a huge cabbage field. In the wide space between the Marble Palace and the building formerly the British Embassy, the residence of the last British Ambassador in Petrograd, Sir George Buchanan, stood the statue of Suvorov, clad in Roman armour after the fashion of 1800, and looking as unlike the most popular general of the Russian Army as Nelson would look his own self wearing a bowler hat. Nevertheless, the ‘odd’ sculptural convention was accepted by the people of Leningrad. Baranov remarked that the authorities were going to sandbag Suvorov, but the soldiers of the Leningrad front asked that this should not be done as they liked to visit the Suvorov statue when on leave.
The famous tall golden railings of the Summer Garden with the shiny granite urns on top were still much the same – those railings which an eccentric English yachtsman had come specially to see. He stepped ashore outside the Summer Garden and, having examined the railings, went aboard his yacht again fully satisfied, and sailed back to England. A favourite, if improbable, St. Petersburg story. So here was the Summer Garden, that piece of primeval forest with lime trees many centuries old, which at Peter the Great’s behest a master gardener from Hanover had turned into one of the most famous parks in Europe. In the north-east corner of the garden, beside the little humped granite bridge, Peter had built himself a little house, Dutch in its simplicity. There it still was. During the first half of the eighteenth century the pleasure-loving Empresses had built grottoes and fountains in the park, and they called
There were ships on the Neva, anchoring in midstream, or moored to the granite side of the quay, opposite the long line of small half-deserted palaces. The ships were painted grey, a few naval craft among them, but mostly former cargo ships. Were they all being used for anti-aircraft batteries? On board, sailors of the Baltic Fleet were busy doing things. Where was the rest of the Baltic Fleet? Kronstadt, perhaps. But I preferred not to ask. And how much of the Fleet was left? Even less did I like to ask that. All I knew was that the Baltic Fleet had done wonders, but that in the early days of the war, in the Gulf of Riga, and at Tallinn, it had suffered many great losses through air bombardment. Today its submarines still continued to be active in the Baltic, and the naval marines, fighting on the Leningrad front, were among the toughest Russian troops. The Germans had an almost superstitious fear of these men who were reputed to be desperate characters, who preferred knifing Germans to any other form of slaughter. In 1917, the bourgeoisie regarded the sailors of the Baltic Fleet as a new variety of apache.
And true enough, there were many thugs among them – like the twelve of Blok’s poems – apostolic thugs which any Revolution not only produces but needs. They could look ruthless and frightening, and rather romantic. With that long forelock coming from under the sailor’s cap, worn at such a rakish angle, with their tattooed chests showing above their striped blue and white jerseys, and that devilish swagger of theirs, they drove all the dishonest women of Petrograd crazy and many an honest one too.
But the Baltic Fleet today was different. Much of the old swaggering tradition was still alive, but they were highly disciplined men now, with infinite devotion and a record of courage and self-sacrifice that matched the record of their southern comrades, the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and of the marines who fought and died at Sebastopol.
We drove in the car along the quay to the Summer Garden, over the little humped granite bridges across the Venetian-like Winter Canal and the Swan Canal, past the Winter Palace, with its now dirty-grey walls chipped by shell splinters, past the grey Marble Palace overlooking the vast Champ de Mars parade ground, now turned into a huge cabbage field. In the wide space between the Marble Palace and the building formerly the British Embassy, the residence of the last British Ambassador in Petrograd, Sir George Buchanan, stood the statue of Suvorov, clad in Roman armour after the fashion of 1800, and looking as unlike the most popular general of the Russian Army as Nelson would look his own self wearing a bowler hat. Nevertheless, the ‘odd’ sculptural convention was accepted by the people of Leningrad. Baranov remarked that the authorities were going to sandbag Suvorov, but the soldiers of the Leningrad front asked that this should not be done as they liked to visit the Suvorov statue when on leave.
The famous tall golden railings of the Summer Garden with the shiny granite urns on top were still much the same – those railings which an eccentric English yachtsman had come specially to see. He stepped ashore outside the Summer Garden and, having examined the railings, went aboard his yacht again fully satisfied, and sailed back to England. A favourite, if improbable, St. Petersburg story. So here was the Summer Garden, that piece of primeval forest with lime trees many centuries old, which at Peter the Great’s behest a master gardener from Hanover had turned into one of the most famous parks in Europe. In the north-east corner of the garden, beside the little humped granite bridge, Peter had built himself a little house, Dutch in its simplicity. There it still was. During the first half of the eighteenth century the pleasure-loving Empresses had built grottoes and fountains in the park, and they called
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