Tatyana Smyslyaeva Biography

“Likhacheva:“ This ice road was called the road of death and not at all “dear life”, as our writers later called it subsequently. The cars often failed in the wormwood, because they drove at night. Showing that one mother went crazy: she was driving in the second car, and her children drove in the first, and this first car failed under her eyes. Her car quickly went around the children.

They raised them further, not stopping from exhaustion, it was killed, frozen or missing on this road! When she returned with bread, no husband, nor carpets were robbed, they took away the suitcases of the depleted, and there were a lot of blood on the ice. By order of the Presidium, on the hint of our director-P. Lebedev-Polyansky, who lived in Moscow and did not imagine what was being done in Leningrad, there was a “reduction in the states”.

Every week orders for dismissal were posted. The dismissal was scary, it was tantamount to the death sentence: the dismissed was lost, it was impossible to go to work. They did not give the dismissed cards. All ethnographers died out. The librarians were badly damaged, many mathematicians died - young and talented. But the zoologists have survived: many knew how to hunt. His family was evacuated, he moved to live at the institute and now and then demanded a plate of soup or a portion of porridge in his office.

In the end, he froze with a stomach, asked me about the signs of an ulcer and asked to call the doctor. The doctor came from the university clinic, entered the room where he was lying with his stomach, pulled his nose disgusting air in the room and grimaced; Leaving, the doctor was indignant and scolded: the starving doctor was called to the worried director! In the frost, in the morning in silence, when we were already in our beds for the most part, we heard how a dying mouse convulsively rode somewhere by the window and then died: she could not find a single baby in our room.

Many employees did not receive cards and the Germans came to prepare for the blockade of the city, and we - for its surrender to the Germans. The evacuation of food from Leningrad ceased only when the Germans cut all the railways; It was at the end of August. Leningrad was prepared for surrender and differently: they burned archives. Ashes flew through the streets. Leningrad was surrounded by a ring from peasant carts.

They were not allowed to Leningrad. The peasants stood hikes with cattle, crying children who began to freeze in cold nights. At first they went to them from Leningrad for milk and meat: they cut cattle. By the end of G., those refugees who were distributed to schools and other public buildings froze. I remember one such building overwhelmed by people on Ligovka. Probably, now none of those working in it knows how many people died here.

Finally, first of all, those that were subjected to “internal evacuation” from the southern regions of the city were dying: they were also without things, without reserves. Those who could not receive cards were starving: those who fled from the suburbs and other cities. They were the first to die, they lived in a good job on the floor of stations and schools.

So, some with two cards, others without cards. These refugees without cards were innumerable, but there were many people with several cards. They recruited women who were supposed to accompany children. Since departure from the city on a personal initiative was prohibited, everyone who wanted to run later was attached to children's echelons that many children were sent near Novgorod - towards the Germans.

They told how in Lyuban the ladies accompanying, grabbing their own children, fled, leaving the children of strangers. The children wandered hungry, cried. Small children could not name their names when they were somehow collected, and forever lost their parents. Still others could not close their mouths, and saliva fled from their open mouth to clothes. They put it in their arms and on their feet.

Meanwhile, they simply had to be fed, but there was nothing to feed them. I asked: what will happen to them next? They answered me: "They will die." They need to feed them a lot, since they have a strong degree of exhaustion. ” The nurse pulled the corpses of the dead to the basement. I remember that one was still very young. His face was black: the faces of the starving were very dark.

The orderly explained to me that it was necessary to pull the corpses down while they are still warm. When the corpse is colder, lice crawl out. Plotkin, who recorded everyone, achieved his release due to health reasons and in the winter he fled from Leningrad by plane, enrolling his “good familiar”, a teacher of English and arranging it in her plane on the institute’s armor.We, the “white -killetters”, were credited to the institute’s self -defense units, handed us hunting double -barrels and forced us to study the system in front of the historical faculty.

Soon, the training stopped: people were tired, did not come to classes and began to die “untrained”. I was lying, children too. The room was dark. It was lit by electric batteries with bulbs from a pocket lantern. Two young people entered and began to ask with a quick tongue twister: “Bakkara, ready, are there cameras? In the end, we bought something from us.

It was already in February or March. They were terrible, like grave worms. We still moved in our dark crypt, and they have already prepared to eat us. The boys, especially the adolescents suffering from hunger, need more food, rushed to bread and immediately began to eat it. They did not try to run away: just to eat more until they took it away. They lifted the collars in advance, waiting for beatings, lay on bread and ate, ate, ate.

And on the stairs of the houses, other thieves were expected and from the weakened ones they took food, cards, passports. It was especially difficult for the elderly. Those from whom the cards were taken could not restore them. It was enough to eat such a weakened day or two, as they could not walk, and when their legs ceased to act, the end came. Usually families did not die immediately.

While there was at least one in the family who could walk and redeem the bread, the rest lying were still alive. But it was enough for this latter to stop walking or falling somewhere on the street, on the stairs it was especially difficult for those who lived on high floors, as the whole family came to an end. The streets lay corpses. Nobody picked them up. Who were the dead?

Maybe that woman still has a child who awaits her in an empty cold and dark apartment? There were a lot of women who fed their children, taking away the piece they needed. These mothers were the first to die, and the child was left alone. So our colleague on the publishing house died - O. she gave everything to the child. She was found dead in her room.

She was lying on the bed. The child was with her under the blanket, tugging on her mother’s nose, trying to “wake” her. A few days later, her “rich” relatives came to the Davidovich room to take the child later in kindergarten. Cannibalism has begun! First, the corpses were stripped, then cut to the bones, there was almost no meat on them, cut and bare corpses were terrible. She went for meat, she was told the address where it was possible to exchange things for meat and did not return.

It died somewhere near the hearty market. She looked relatively good.