Saturday, August 6, 2011, at 2 p.m.

City of Thieves by David Benioff

The siege of Leningrad

















The encirclement of Leningrad by the German army was completed on September 8, 1941, and was not completely lifted until January 27, 1944. By the time it was over, of the original 3 million residents of the city, anywhere from 600,000 to 800,000 had died of cold, starvation, or bombardment by the Germans (not to mention being shot by the authorities for looting, desertion, etc). The picture and the facts are lifted from the St. Petersburg tourism web page Another good site I found was part of an "Eyewitness to History" site and contains several survivor accounts in their own words.

Cultural References from City of Thieves (I look them up so you don't have to.)

War and Peace. On page 90, Kolya expresses his opinion about Natasha Rostov, the main female character from Tolstoy's War and Peace, causing Lev to marvel that anyone would care that much about a fictitious character. What I found out by watching the David Benioff video that I have embedded below is that, during the siege, copies of War and Peace were printed up and handed out to the people of Leningrad to read as a morale booster.

Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938). (I can't find the exact page for reference). A Russian poet of Polish Jewish extraction, Mandelstam grew up in imperial St. Petersburg, and like most poets of the time, was initially a supporter of the revolution. Like the father of the main character, Lev, he was seized by the police and died in custody. Benioff references Mandelstam's "Stalin Epigram."

The Stalin Epigram
by Osip Mandelstam
translated by W. S. Merwin

Our lives no longer feel ground under them.
At ten paces you can’t hear our words.

But whenever there’s a snatch of talk
it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer,

the ten thick worms his fingers,
his words like measures of weight,

the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,
the glitter of his boot-rims.

Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses
he toys with the tributes of half-men.

One whistles, another meows, a third snivels.
He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom.

He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,
One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye.

He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries.
He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966). A Russian poet of upper-class Russian extraction and a great friend of Osip Mandelstam. (Some, including Mandelstam's wife, claimed that the two were more than friends, but Akmatova always denied it.) Akhmatova also initially supported the revolution but eventually became disillusioned. She was often criticized by the Soviet establishment for writing bourgeois, sentimental love poetry. Because of her personal associations, her poetry was officially banned between 1925 and 1940. On page 68, Kolya lashes out at Akhmatova, not only for her "narcissistic" verse, but also for having left Leningrad and for urging the women of Leningrad to fight via radio broadcast from the safety of Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975). The composer remained initially remained in Leningrad where he volunteered for the fire brigade and posed for the posters mentioned by Lev on page 67. He wrote the first three movements of his 7th Symphony while in Leningrad, but was evacuated to Kuybishev where he finished the work (it turns out Kolya was right about that). The 7th Symphony is often called the "Leningrad Symphony," and was premiered in Moscow, but the most famous performance was in wartime Leningrad itself as detailed in the video clip below.



Interview with David Benioff about City of Thieves

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3