Сегодня нам, наконец, вернули второе сочинение по английскому. На этот раз задача состояла в интервьюировании любого человека, личность или жизнь которого мы считаем тем или иным образом интересными. Поскольку мой круг общения в США в данный момент очень ограничен, брать интервью мне реально было не у кого.

Разумеется, будучи находчивым украинским студентом, я не долго думая полезла в интернет. Там я нашла вот это интервью одного из участников блокады Ленинграда, которого я, не долго думая, решила выдать за соего дедушку. Разумеется не совсем честно, однако интервью, которым я воспользовалась, за исключением нескольких коротких вопросов журналиста, полностью основанно на рассказе от первого лица и не подвергалось какой-либо литературной обработке. Для облегчения совести, притворюсь, что его для меня кто-то на диктофон записал.

Комментарий преподавателя: "Mia, this is an amazing paper. It is worth publishing. What a story. I was riveted while I was reading it. You only have a couple of typos, and I put in a header for you. I'm going to grade this as a final paper. Be proud. You have a 100. Professor Orr". По идее, это должен был быть наш first draft, который препод исправляет и отправляте обратно на доработку, мне же его засчитали как окончательный вариант. Мелочь, а приятно Ж)

Nine Hundred Days of Terror

The Second World War is widely known as the most devastating conflict in human history, and its legacy is mindboggling even for young generations who are very much used to continuous wars of the end of 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. While this tragedy took a great tall on many nations, it was the USSR that accepted its hardest blow and suffered the most casualties and, by far, the most military deaths. This is why people in former Soviet Union, when talking about the World War II, are mostly referring to the events of 1941-1945 that are known there as the Great Patriotic War. These four dreadful years left an eternal imprint on the whole nation by taking lives of twenty three million of Soviet people and brining devastation and terror to every single family. The list of atrocities of those years is very long, but it is almost nine hundred days Siege of Leningrad that is still remembered as the most disturbing event of that terrible time.

Vladimir Lisiy is one of a very few people still alive who witnessed the tragedy unravel from within the walls of the abandoned city. He was born in Leningrad, now known as St. Petersburg, in 1931 and was only 10 years old when the Great Patriotic War began. Its outbreak caught Vladimir in a nearby town, where he and his family were visiting a close relative, on June 22, 1941. There he saw first mobilizations and heard sounds of firing German planes for the first time. On June 29, town officials declared urgent evacuation, and, on the same day, Vladimir and his mother arrived to the train station trying to return to Leningrad. “There were so many people hoping to leave that it was impossible to get on the train, but, fortunately, my aunt, who was working at the station, was able to get us two tickets,” recalls Vladimir.

Upon arrival to Leningrad, Vladimir could witness the city that has already been marked by war: windows were sealed up crosswise with paper, wood-sheds were taken apart, and frames were covered with special paint that was supposedly protecting them from ignition. Preparing to leave the city, Vladimir and his parents stayed in Leningrad for two weeks. On July 5, 1941, he arrived to the train station, from where kids were being sent to safer locations. “There was a lot of confusion during the boarding, and I remember being scared and strangely excited – scared because I was leaving my mother behind and excited because there were many kids on that train, and we all saw the trip as some kind of adventure,” says Vladimir.

He had spent three weeks in a small village in Novgorod Oblast with hundreds of other children when many parents, including his mother, alarmed by reports of potentially dangerous situation developing in that area, began to arrive in order to take their kids somewhere else. With a large group of people, Vladimir and his mother headed towards the station that was located 60 miles away. “We crossed this distance on foot in only one day; I was extremely exhausted after just a few hours, but, somehow, was able to make it all the way,” recalls Vladimir. At the station, people boarded the train that, to everyone’s great surprise, instead of taking them farther inland, brought them back to Leningrad.

According to Vladimir, the month of August was full of uncertainty. Since many people were brought back to the city, everyone thought that situation on the front must had been improving; moreover, there was no shortage of foodstuffs, and most of the stores stayed opened. The tension increased closer to the end of August when city officials started mass mobilization for trench digging. On August 21, 1941, it was announced that city-dwellers should be ready to defend Leningrad. With this announcement, more and more people, including Vladimir’s family, began to prepare to leave the city. Just a few days before their departure, however, Vladimir became seriously sick, and his mother decided that they should stay in Leningrad. “Back then, we did not quite realize how serious the situation was,” he points out.

In the beginning of September, people began to notice alarming signs: the food distribution was stopped and increasing number of recessing soldiers began to arrive in Leningrad. “If I’m not mistaken, it was September 8 when we heard already familiar aircraft warning; this time, however, it was followed by the first raid that was accompanied by sounds of shootings and roars.” According to Vladimir, despite the fact that much more difficult times would follow, it were these first days when mental tension was the strongest because, although everybody knew that Nazis were close to Leningrad, people could only guess what would follow. “I will never forget this first bombing and the face of my mother when she ran home from work and saw that I was alive and not hurt,” says Vladimir.

September 8, 1941, was the date of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad that would last almost nine hundred days. Starting from then, the city was regularly bombed, and situation was gradually deteriorating. By November, people began to feel shortages of food very acutely. In December, all houses were left without electricity or heat, and street railway service was discontinued. “I remember finding a sack of croutons sometime in the fall; when I asked mother if I could have some, she told that we were saving them for a hard day. It was mid-December when she opened that sack and gave me the first crouton. I remember thinking at that moment that hard days must have finally arrived. ” recalls Vladimir.

The following moths were very difficult, especially in terms of food shortages. Every family was given a card and assigned to one of the stores where they could get only a certain amount of products. As the situation got worse, people had to spend more and more hours in lines to get 125 grams of bread, the only product available, per person. Trying to get more food, Vladimir’s family had to sell or exchange all of their furniture and most of their clothes. By the end of that winter, Leningradians started to massively die from hunger. It was then when Vladimir heard very disturbing news, “Sometime in February, I was told that one of my classmates was killed by his mother, who used his body to make a stew. There were many stories like that, although I cannot say for sure if they were true.”

The long waited relief came in summer of 1942 when people who lived through that terrible winter and were still strong enough began to plant vegetable gardens. By that time, Vladimir’s mother was very weak, so she sent him to plant some cabbage and turnips, the only seeds family had in their disposal. Vladimir says that cabbage turned out to be very good, but, unfortunately, they were able to collect only leaves because someone had stolen all the heads; nevertheless, it was a much better than nothing. The overall situation also somewhat improved, and, although food was still scarce, children returned back to schools. “We were transferred to a new building that had some heating, which was very important. I remember, however, that after the third lesson I always started to feel very dizzy and could not wait for the only meal of the day that was served around 3pm,” recalls Vladimir.

In summer of 1942, Sevastopol, another city under the siege, was finally taken by Germans after 250 days long defense. It was a serious moral blow for Leningradians who believed that both cities would be the ones standing until the end of the war. With great anxiety, everybody was also following events unfolding under Stalingrad and listening to the news about Nazis’ plans to storm Leningrad. In August 1942, alarmed by this possibility, Leningrad officials started coercive evacuation; this time, however, many people did not want to leave the city because they believed that the situation would soon improve. “We decided to stay till the last gun is fired, and were extremely excited when the siege was finally broken through by Soviet army in January 1943,” says Vladimir. By the end of that month, after eight hundred and seventy one terrible days, the Siege of Leningrad was finally discontinued, “Never in my life have I experienced emotions as strong as when I heard that Germans retreated and the blockade was over!”

Every day we are moving farther and farther away from terrible realities of the Second World War, but time has no power over memories of millions of people who had to live through those devastating years. Post-war generations will never be able to fully understand what their parents and grandparents had to live through. One can only listen to stories of those who survived and, through these stories, try to grasp the full degree of the tragedy. The Siege of Leningrad left almost million people dead; more than half of them were victims of hunger. Those who survived the blockade were regular people who were able to do impossible – live through ice-cold hell. These people are gradually disappearing into history, and it is up to us to make sure that their memories will live forever because this is the only way to prevent the tragedy from repeating itself.