Privyet! Another week has gone by…pretty quickly at that! Hard to believe that I’ve been here 12 weeks now…
The past few days have been snowy and beautiful. This much snow in November is pretty atypical – usually it just rains this time of year – so I feel very lucky to be seeing the city under a lovely white blanket.
On Thursday, we went to the Museum of the Blockade of Leningrad. As I’ve mentioned before, during World War II this city (then called Leningrad) was under siege by the Nazis for almost 900 days. During this time artillery bombardment killed about 17,000 people – but this was a minute number compared with the million that died of starvation.
The first winter of the blockade was the worst. When the Nazis first lay siege to the city, there was a very limited food supply available, and by the winter rations had been reduced to 125 grams of bread a day. I don’t really think in grams, so that wasn’t a very tangible figure to me until I saw a display at the museum of that bread ration – it sure wasn’t much. Maybe the equivalent of two slices of sandwich bread. The worst part is that it wasn’t even real bread. The flour supply was so small that they used sawdust and all sorts of other fillers to try to provide some sort of bulk to these starving people. After that winter, some rations were brought into the city across Lake Ladoga, but there still wasn’t much to eat for the rest of the war.
We listened to a recording of an air raid, as well as to some radio broadcasts from that time. Even while the war was ongoing, Leningraders were very much aware that they were living at a watershed moment in the history of their city, and did a great deal to record what was going on.
Another particularly fascinating exhibit was a map of the city showing which areas were most heavily bombarded. I was able to find my neighborhood on the map, and saw that it was bombed extensively. For the past couple of days, I’ve been walking down the streets imagining empty shells of buildings, starving survivors, and piles of rubble. This city is haunted, and if you’re not careful it gets under your skin and starts to haunt you too.
That same evening, in a radical change of pace, we went to a performance of Cossack dancing. The performance was in a big modern performance hall, and the audience was mostly middle-aged Russians. It was definitely kitschy, but not tourist oriented. Many of the songs performed were obviously very well-known, as most of the audience was singing along. There were some incredible acrobatic feats, including jumping back and forth over swords and and some ridiculous whirling leaps through the air. Oddly enough, there were also some moves that were basically the same as those performed by break-dancers! Those Cossacks would have fit right in on the streets of New York City in the ‘70s, I guess.
In the interest of procrastination your edification, I have scoured YouTube for a good video of this kind of dancing. Here’s the best one I found…
Last night we had a group discussion of Crime and Punishment…oh how I love that book. Re-reading it in the city where it takes place is a completely different experience. Petersburg itself plays a huge role in the novel, and being here has really allowed me to get inside the heads of the characters in a way that I never could before I came here.
Walking to my professor’s apartment (where we had the discussion), I saw some really pretty views of the snow-covered city. Here are a few pictures.
Walking across the Field of Mars (an old military parade ground):
A view down the canal next to the field.
Across the bridge in the other direction.
And the Church on the Spilled Blood. It was pretty dark, so these pictures didn’t turn out great.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now…
I have a truly frightening amount of work to do before this semester is out…eek. I promise I’ll be better about posting this week though, even if it’s just a couple of pictures! After all, more work means more procrastination…and I have some photos of my neighborhood that I’ve gotta put up one of these days.
From Russia With Love,
Rachel
