The just indignation of the Leningradians was caused primarily by those who openly profited from the tragedy of the city.
“How disgusting are these well-fed, puffy-white‘coupons’who carve out card coupons from starving people in canteens and shops and steal bread and food from them. This is done simply: "by mistake" they cut out more than they should be, and a hungry person finds it out only at home, when no one can prove anything to anyone, "the blockade woman A. G. Berman shares her impressions of the injustice with her diary in September 1942.
“In the queue, at the counter, everyone is watching the bread and the arrow with greedy eyes so as not to be weighed down. And they often argue, and swear in plaintive thin voices with the saleswomen, who answer them rudely, and, well-fed, despise this hungry, greedy and helpless crowd."
The prices that were inflated on the black grocery market are simply amazing: in April 1942, a kilogram of butter can reach the price of 1800 rubles from speculators! In their diaries, the blockaders record a particular disgust at the fact that such products are clearly stolen. The scale of theft, according to eyewitnesses, exceeds all reasonable limits and elementary humanity. Here is what the Leningrader A. A. Belov writes:
“Whoever you don’t talk to, you hear from everyone that the last piece of bread cannot be fully received. They steal from children, from cripples, from the sick, from workers, from residents. Those who work in the canteen, in the shops, or at the bakery are now a kind of bourgeoisie. Not only is she well fed, she also buys clothes and things. Now the chef's hat has the same magical effect as the crown during the tsarist era."
Perhaps one of the most resonant pictures of the period of the siege of Leningrad.
In Leningrad, there was such a phenomenon as canteens with enhanced nutrition. The workers of such institutions especially contrasted with the surrounding gloomy and painful reality. The artist I. A. Vladimirov writes about this:
“Tidy and neatly dressed waitresses promptly serve trays of food and glasses of chocolate or tea. The order is supervised by the "stewards". This is vivid and very convincing evidence of the health benefits of "enhanced nutrition" in the "factory kitchen".
Indeed, all the waitresses and, of course, most of all the "bosses" serve as examples of a happy, well-fed life in our time of hunger. The faces are ruddy, the cheeks, the lips are poured, and the oily eyes and the fullness of the well-fed figures are very convincing evidence that these employees do not lose their kilograms of body weight, but significantly gain weight.
“This is where we need to look for donors,” a military doctor who was sitting next to me at the table told me. I, of course, felt that not a single eroded, rounded waitress would give a drop of her blood, but I kept silent and only remarked: "It will hardly be possible." A few days later, at dinner, I met with the doctor again and asked about the donation.
- You will not believe how many offensive answers I have heard. They did not hesitate to cover me with the most disgusting areal expressions like: “Oh, you, so and so! Do you want to take for money for our blood! No, we don’t need your money! I will not give my acquired blood to a single devil!"
The orientalist A. N. Boldyrev writes in the late autumn of 1943:
“I was at the same naval officers' meeting. Again the lecture did not take place due to the complete absence of listeners, again they fed me a small but delicious cold dinner. I was amazed again by the warmth, the abundance of light, the strange lack of people with the saturation of the serving people (there are a lot of the fattest overdressed girls)."
It is noteworthy that the NKVD Directorate of Leningrad and the region closely followed the mood of the townspeople regarding the numerous speculators. So, in their reports by the end of 1942, they mentioned the increasing frequency of dissatisfied statements about the work of canteens and shops, from which products were dragged to the black market. Increasingly, rumors began to circulate about mass speculation and the exchange of stolen products for valuables. Historical sources contain excerpts from letters, many of which were sent to the law enforcement agencies of Leningrad: “We are entitled to a good ration, but the fact is that a lot is stolen in the dining room” or “There are people who have not felt hunger and are now raging with fat. Look at the saleswoman of any store, she has a gold watch on her wrist. On another bracelet, gold rings. Every cook who works in the canteen now has gold."
Speculators and confiscated values that were received for products.
On average, in the fall of 1942, for ten days, the NKVD bodies recorded about 1 message per 70 residents of the city - discontent among the masses grew. At the same time, the leadership of the NKVD informed the leadership of the Soviet Union that “the main contingent of those arrested for speculation and theft of socialist property are employees of trade and supply organizations (trade network, warehouses, bases, canteens). The main object of theft and speculation is food and other rationed scarce goods."
The market relations of the besieged city created a special relationship "seller - buyer". Women, as the main source of stolen food, demanded appropriate goods in exchange for food. The wife of Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev recalls:
"V. L. Komarovich advised to change primarily women's things. I went to the Nourishing Market, where there was a flea market. I took my dresses. I exchanged the blue crepe de Chine for one kilogram of bread. It was bad, but I changed the gray dress for a kilogram of 200 grams of duranda. It was better."
Dmitry Likhachev himself writes:
“Komarovich said:“Zhura finally understood what position she was in: she allowed her to change her dress shoes.”
Zhura is his daughter, she studied at the Theater Institute. Fashionable women's things were the only thing that could be exchanged: only the servants, saleswomen, and cooks had food.
Over time, the speculators realized that they could visit Leningraders' apartments in the hope of a profitable exchange. Many blockade members could no longer go out and received meager food from close relatives, who sold dependents' cards in canteens. And those who could walk had already managed to exchange everything of value for crumbs of food.
The literary critic D. Moldavsky recalls:
“Once a certain speculator appeared in our apartment - rosy-cheeked, with magnificent, wide-set blue eyes. He took some maternal things and gave four glasses of flour, a pound of dry jelly and something else. I met him already coming down the stairs. For some reason I remember his face. I well remember his sleek cheeks and light eyes. This was probably the only person I wanted to kill. And I wish I was too weak to do that …"
Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev writes in his memoirs:
“I remember how two speculators came to us. I was lying, children too. The room was dark. It was lit by electric batteries with flashlight bulbs. Two young men came in and quickly began to ask: "Baccarat, cookware, do you have cameras?" They also asked something else. In the end, they bought something from us. It was in February or March. They were as terrible as grave worms. We were still stirring in our dark crypt, and they were already getting ready to devour us."
Children were among the first victims of theft and speculation in besieged Leningrad.
The system of theft and speculation in the terrible conditions of the blockade worked flawlessly and did not accept people with remnants of conscience. The case, from which the blood runs cold, is described by the artist N. V. Lazareva:
“Milk has appeared in the children's hospital - a very necessary product for babies. In the distributor, according to which the sister receives food for the sick, the weight of all dishes and products is indicated. Milk relied on a portion of 75 grams, but each of it was underfilled by 30 grams. I was outraged, and I have repeatedly stated this. Soon the barmaid said to me: "Talk again and you will fly out!" And indeed, I flew into a laborer, in the then - labor army."
The most base human vices, including the lack of pity for children, manifested themselves in all their dark glory in the horrors of besieged Leningrad.
