Saint Petersburg
Sacrifice and Redemption in the City that Defied Hitler
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
The epic story of the "900 days and nights” of the Siege of Leningrad, set within the history of the iconic city from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin.
In the crucible of World War II, Saint Petersburg—then known as Leningrad—stands as a testament to human endurance. As the Nazis encircle the city, intent on annihilating its 1.5 million inhabitants, the narrative plunges into the harrowing nine hundred days and nights of relentless hardship and unyielding resilience.
Starving residents, horrified by their own gaunt reflections, resort to bulking bread with wood shavings, consuming wallpaper paste, and even turning to their pets. Workers at the mass crematorium numb their horror with extra vodka rations. Yet, amid this suffering, the resilience of culture and hope shines through, with orchestras and theatres defiantly continuing their performances, a flicker of humanity against the backdrop of despair.
This book not only chronicles the Siege of Leningrad but also traces the pivotal importance of Saint Petersburg across the centuries. From Peter the Great’s visionary founding of the city, through its revolutionary rebirth as Petrograd and its Soviet identity as Leningrad, to its renaissance as Saint Petersburg in the post-Soviet era, we explore the layers of history that shape this extraordinary place
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian McKay (The Hidden History of Code-Breaking) offers an elegiac chronicle of the three-year siege of Leningrad. In September 1941, the Nazis surrounded the city with the express purpose of starving its inhabitants to death. But Leningraders maintained their poetic spirit throughout the hardships, McKay shows, including during the siege's first weeks, when city residents persevered in enjoying the White Nights social season, "a time of studied elegance and grace" during the far north city's twilit summer evenings. Even years into the siege, "pared down" performances continued at the city's Philharmonic Hall and other venues, and "encouraging" poems were "declaimed from loudspeakers." Most famously, the composer Shostakovich labored over his Seventh Symphony, playing it in the "rare moments of silence" between air-raid warnings and bombs. McKay's re-creations of the highs and lows of the siege are striking and vivid, and include horrible scenes of cannibalism alongside piercing profiles of famous denizens like poet Anna Akhmatova. The author also astutely dips into the city's past and future, from its 1703 founding (as Saint Petersburg) by Peter the Great through Vladimir Putin's birth there in 1952, looking for insights into what in the city's character allowed it to endure the siege's horrors. Lyrical and arresting, it's a kaleidoscopic account of a population pushed to the edge, but still enamored of life's splendor.
