Book Blurb:
As the Germans drive deeper into Leningrad, Soviet citizens are seized with fear, terror, and hunger.
Thrown into an agreement that will spare her life but force her to betray her fellow citizens, Tatiana Ivankova faces new trials every day, including the unpredictable nature of the German officer holding her fate in her hands. As she attempts to save the lives of the ones she loves, Tatiana finds herself facing danger at all turns, including from her fellow Leningraders.
Haunted by memories of his past, Heinrich Nottebohm attempts to obey orders and not question the decisions made by his superiors, even if it goes against his own morals. But when he finds himself sympathizing with the Leningraders and Tatiana, Heinrich must make decisions that could end in dire consequences for himself and his men.
As winter takes hold of Leningrad and pushes both sides to collapse, Tatiana and Heinrich are forced to make difficult decisions. But will their choices lead to them saving the lives of those they love or lead to their own demise?
Leningrad: The People’s Siege details the harrowing winter of 1941-42, which led to countless deaths and inspired a nation to fight on.
Editorial Review:
The Historian and writer M.T. Anderson in his 'Symphony for the City of the Dead;'' writes movingly, and at some length of the tragedy and the agony of the City of Leningrad in the Second World War: “Gradually, like the emigration of an insidious, phantom population, Leningrad belonged more to the dead than to the living. The dead watched over streets and sat in snow swamped buses. Whole apartment buildings were tenanted by them, where in broken rooms, dead families sat waiting at tables. Their dominion spread room by room, like lights going out in the evening.” The writer Anna Akhmatova writes in similar vein: “In those years only the dead smiled, glad to be at rest; And Leningrad City swayed like a needle appendix to its prisons.”
The inconceivably terrible siege of Leningrad was one of the longest and most destructive in all recorded history and has been described by some eminent historians as a systematic and “racially motivated starvation policy”. The siege began on 8th September 1941 when German and Finnish troops finally blocked all roads leading east and ended two and a half years later - 872 days- when Soviet troops finally broke the siege. In a city where temperatures routinely plummeted to minus 30 degrees below zero, it is estimated that there were a million and a half civilian deaths. Individuals struggled to survive daily and reports of cannibalism were often widespread, though often anecdotal. Far from anecdotal, and quite routine, were the robberies and murders for food ration cards.
It is in the nightmarish situation that the writer Rachel R. Heil sets us down, or rather thrusts us into. The People's Siege is the second book in a trilogy of books on the terrible siege of Leningrad and readers owe it to themselves to also read first Leningrad: The People's War and then go on to read Leningrad: The People's Hero to make full sense and coherency of The People's Siege. It is a personal and moving account of two individuals caught up in what is a tragedy on a vast and massive scale. There is an element that reminds of the 'star cross'd lovers' of the prologue of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:
'Two households, both alike in dignity
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star cross'd lovers take their life.'
This is the story of Tatiana Ivankova, University student and the equally young German Officer, Heinrich Nottebohm. Both individuals have already experienced great tragedy and trauma in their personal lives and both have excellent motives and reasons for hating the policies, dogmas and beliefs of their separate authoritarian governments that have thrust them into each other's company. It is Rachel R. Heil's particular triumph in this book - one amongst many - to successfully capture the microcosm within the macrocosm in this remarkable book. An entire city is collapsing in on itself as each day passes. The entire infrastructure supporting it has disintegrated. The whole apparatus associated with a living, breathing, civic society - heat and light, transport, food supply, health and other social services - has toppled in chaos. Hundreds of bodies, frozen stiff in the freezing cold, lie ignored and unmourned n empty buildings, in the streets and buses and parks. Hundreds of people starve to death each day. Muggings and murder for food is a commonplace and the Police and other public servants have simply ceased to exist. In these circumstances, in the crippling cold “an everyday citizen ceases to become one when they engage in actions against the State.” By this definition, just about every citizen is becoming a 'criminal against the state. The family unit, its loves and loyalties, is fast becoming a thing of the past. There is no longer any binding glue and people become utterly indifferent to death and suffering. Tatiana and her friends, family and associates brush against death and suffering on a daily basis. For the most part, they are simply numbed by and numbed to it. They have,everyone of them, been profoundly affected by this life, and would remain so for the rest of their lives. Frequently, one or other of the characters recognise this basic fact in themselves and others. “Within the last week or so Marina [one of Tatiana's close friends and a sharer of her guilty secret] found herself saying whatever popped into her head. She didn't care about hurting anyone's feelings. Those didn't exist anymore in Leningraders. If one let their emotions get the better of them, they would go mad.”
Turning now to the specific tragedy within the wider tragedy of the Book: It is December 10th 1941, just over two months since the beginning of the Siege. The general situation within the City is already as outlined above and Tatiana Ivankova and the German Officer Heinrich Nottebohm are having one of their regular meetings where Tatiana passes him snippets of general military information for him to pass on to Generalmajor Rothmann, his one time close friend and superior officer. There is a 'quid pro quo' to these meetings as Tatiana hopes for some sorts of favour in return for these highly dangerous meetings for which she is collected and returned by Nottebohm's faithful and loyal adjutant Walter Schneider. These treacherous secrets are shared by her two close friends, confidants and comrades, Marina,and Lidiya. Tatiana's position is made even more dangerous in that she is also a 'hero of the Soviet Union' for a previous act of courage in taking out a German tank in a previous act. She is, therefore, the darling of the official state newspaper 'Pravda' and its journalists. One of these, a man called Josef has a professional and a more than personal interest in her. To add to her general unease and unhappiness, She has realised that she has in fact fallen in love with the soon to be promoted Oberst [Captain] Heinrich Nottebohm. She is devastated to discover that there appears to be no awareness or recognition on his part of this fact; let alone any reciprocation. As part of these meetings Tatiana finds herself frequently unburdening herself, her fears and reoccupations, to the German Officer:
“I read 'Pravda' a few days ago [she tells him] for the first time in months and do you know what one of the top stories was? Stalin is hosting a dinner in honor of the British diplomat Eden. We are dying by the hundreds every day due to hunger and Stalin is offering a banquet that could feed the city for weeks......they are laughing at our suffering. We are deprived of our basic human rights to bread and instead of trying to help us, all the Party membership care about is how they are perceived by the rest of the world.”
Much later in the narrative, Tatiana is confronted with the awful truth of this when the party hack Josef , an aspiring suitor, takes her to the Party Smolny building: She has already noted to herself the plumpness of the Party officials gathered there:
“Tatiana found herself pulled towards the dining area. She wanted to know why she and the rest of the city were slowly disintegrating, but these people continued to stay in healthy shape. As she approached the room, she heard voices booming and even some laughter....... Party members were seated around a large table, where there was a spread, unlike anything Tatiana had seen before. Every meat, soup, vegetable and delicacy she could think of sat on the table in plentiful portions. The wood itself seemed to groan underneath the weight of the food, and every individual who sat around stacked their plate to the point of absurdity......” Shocked, repulsed and angered beyond all means, Tatiana flees the room and the building.
Heinrich Nottebohm, with his own private grief and tragedy and his own deep hatred of the Nazi regime, forbears to comment. Tatiana's life, beyond her actual traitorous activities, is unrelentingly grim! She is, of course, like everyone else in the city, undernourished and starving and desperately, dangerously, exhausted. Yet she and her comrades Marina and Lidiya, are part of a squad under the terrifying and intimidating Ekaterina responsible for assisting in police duties, which consist mainly of loading the hundreds of corpses onto trucks, something they have become accustomed to and which affects them all. She is also deeply concerned about her own imperilled family to whom tragedy in the shape of the Soviet regime has already affected: “It struck Tatiana that they were speaking like they were middle aged about the inevitable passing of their elderly parents, yet not one of them was even thirty. It was enough to make Tatiana weep.” In the Ivankova home there is, on a piece of beloved furniture soon to be broken up for firewood, a photograph of the family in happier times. Of the thirteen people in the photograph, only five remain alive. Her own mother, her mind gone, is feeding her own meagre ration to her youngest daughter Manya, herself desperately ill with the last stages of typhus. Along with Dmitri, her brother and titular head of the family, she makes a clandestine and highly perilous journey to a student quarter in the city. Her brother has already told her that in order to survive they must learn to be 'unethical'. They trade their mother's precious wedding pearl earrings for a slab of slaughtered horsemeat in a sack. They are obliged to disguise the contents of their sled as a corpse in order to avoid suspicion or attack. After all, a corpse on a sled is a commonplace! With help she carries her own mother to hospital- to die there. She hates God, but visits a Cathedral nonetheless to light a candle.
It is in fact Tatiana's beloved own young sister who brings matters with Heinrich to a head. At the conclusion of her last meeting with him, Tatiana was left bitter and miserable: “Tatiana wanted to tell him that she hadn't stopped thinking about him since their argument and, despite his rejection, her love for him had not diminished. He didn't have to return her feelings; she just wanted him to know that she would be there if he changed his mind.” Tatiana has not attended a meeting with Heinrich for some time due to her intense despair at his failure to even acknowledge her feelings. In Heinrich's sector the lack of military information that she had been feeding him on a regular basis has led to military reversals that are creating adverse comment from his superiors.. Tatiana, heartbroken at this latest family tragedy, provokes a family row and disappears with Manya to seek help from Heinrich. The family in alarm and with Marina and Lidiya and the Party man Josef [with his own secret torch] spit up to search for her; Marina and Lidiya cannily selecting the military zone confidently knowing where to find her. In most certainly one of the most tragic episodes in the entire book not even the medicine and hot soup of the enemy is able to bring the girl succour. It is as a direct result of this latest tragedy in Tatiana's life, and its consequences, that Heinrich finally finds it within himself to admit his own love for her, and to reveal his own terrible tragic secret and his reason for being a member of the conquering invasion force that has brought about such misery.
The constant stress of these encounters, once their mutual, love has been acknowledged and fulfilled, has become unbearable; as has their longing. Tatiana has, in addition, made a terrible and vindictive enemy in Josef for having spurned his overtures as a lover. In a possibly lethal combination with the fanatical Ekaterina, who has her own jealous agenda in wishing to replace her as the propogandist 'face of Leningrad'. They are determined to bring her low and it becomes almost a full time occupation for Marina to shield her friend from this threat. Almost immediately, Josef takes revenge by assigning the three friends to form part of a firing squad. Tatiana's own surviving family have become increasingly suspicious of her regular night time disappearances. Heinrich, for his part, has more than enough of his own worries. His superior, Max Rothmann, is plotting against him and the loyalty of his own once devoted subordinates has arrived at breaking point over his compromising position with his secret lover. Events are clearly building up to a crescendo. In Leningrad, in these bitter months of January and February 1942 the situation is worsening yet more. The rumours of cannibalism prove to be well founded and both Tatiana and Marina have their own terrifying experiences of this. They even become part of a squad to monitor and prevent this particular horrendous crime. In a dramatic incident Heinrich witnesses the death of one of his most loyal men and, not without reason, Tatiana is held accountable. The loyalty of Walter Schneider, hitherto is most loyal supporter, finally snaps.
The early days of March bring an ease in the weather and the first faint signs of Spring, flowers begin to appear. The City authorities grow slightly more optimistic. New military operations are planned, as well as a speeding up of the civilian population along 'the road of hope' to Lagoda. A 'spring clean' of the city is ordered. The Spring thaw has revealed hundreds more dead bodies beneath the snow and ice and a resurgence of typhus and the manifestation of 'stage three dystrophy' accounts for hundreds more. Tatiana, Marina and LIdiya are ordered to redouble their efforts in the removal of corpses. Heinrich and Tatiana's direct meetings are now on hold for safety reasons, replaced by impersonal letter drops. On her way to collect one such letter - which isn't there - Tatiana pauses to reflect on her situation: “What Tatiana had experienced within the last few months flooded her mind: the slow and painful demises of her mother and sister, the rapidly developing feelings for Heinrich - it had all left her unable to feel anything, and that seemed more tragic than there being no letter. Would she ever be able to feel sadness again? Or joy? Or anything else?”
There is, however, a general feeling of optimism that perhaps the worst has passed. Thousands of previously undelivered letters begin to arrive; thousands of letters from people now dead addressed to people who are dead themselves. In this way, Marina receives a letter and learns that her family are alive. If not thriving, they are nonetheless alive! Along with thousands of other Leningraders, Tatiana listens on the radio to a broadcast of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony and is comforted. It is a symphony for her, it is a symphony for all the people of Leningrad; alive and dead. Tatiana visits the letter drop off once more. There is a letter this time. Heinrich speaks of his current great difficulties. He speaks also of his determined love for her, of its inevitability and of its strength and power. Tatiana searches for writing materials and writes back........
It is at this point that ''Leningrad: The People's Siege'', the second of Rachel R. Heil's trilogy ends, leaving the reader in anticipation of the conclusion and more than slightly in fear of what further shocks and horrors still lie in store; for the reader has invested much in these figures. It has been a truly harrowing and heartrending journey to date. Rachel R. Heil is to be soundly congratulated on the achievement of bringing into being this tragedy on such a vast Tolstoyan scale and, equally, the skill and precision she displays of a fine craftsperson and miniaturist.
*****
“Leningrad: The People's Siege” by Rachel R. Heil receives five stars and the “Highly Recommended” award of excellence from The Historical Fiction Company
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Author Bio:
Rachel R. Heil is a historical fiction writer who always dreamed of being an author. After years of dreaming, she finally decided to turn this dream into a reality with her first novel, and series, Behind the Darkened Glass. Rachel is an avid history fan, primarily focused on twentieth century history and particularly World War Two-era events. In addition to her love for history, Rachel loves following the British Royal Family and traveling the world, which only opens the door to learning more about a country's history. Rachel resides in Wisconsin.
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