Vera Inber, Leningrad Diary. 1942
Translated by Serge M. Wolff and Rachel Grieve
Original Source: Pochti tri goda. Leningradskii dnevnik (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1946).
19th April, 1942
We visited the Botanical Gardens.
Tikhomirov and Kurnakov led me through the whole place, and showed me the dead palms. I felt very bitter that I hadn’t seen them when they were alive … and I meant to, each Sunday! …
On one of the walls of the Botanical Institute there is a black line-the water-level on that terrible day of the floods of 18 24 (the year of the ‘Bronze Horseman’). The ‘disaster’ level Of 1941 is much higher. It is above our heads, on the level of the tops of the perished palms.
Tikhomirov told us about the collection of rare tulip bulbs which had been dug up by hungry people to make soup. One of these people was caught on the scene of the crime. He was carrying the bulbs away in a gas-mask case. Was it such a ‘crime’ during a winter like ours had been?
Tikhomirov’s story about a ‘tank attack’ repelled by him in 194 1 was also a good one. It may have happened on the day that we were bogged down by the disorderly column of lorries at the comer of Pesochnaia Street and the Aptekarskii Prospect.
It was one of the days of the assault on Leningrad. Only now do we hear about it. One of our tank units, pursued by German planes, needed cover.
The tanks were already at the gates of the Botanical Gardens, indeed they were entering the Gardens in tight formation. Had they progressed a little further, precious trees would be ruined. Such trees, for instance, as the famous Black Poplar, planted by Peter the Great.
Tikhomirov rushed to meet the danger. The leader of the column didn’t want to listen to anything. Still the tanks were advancing. Tikhomirov shouted:
‘This garden has been tended for two hundred years, and you will ruin it in a few minutes.’
This sobered the Commander, evidently visualizing those two hundred years. He lingered for a moment and to linger during an advance means a retreat. Turning to his crew, the Commander ordered:
‘Turn back. The position is unsuitable.’
And the tanks fell back and placed themselves along the Nevka under the branches of the trees overhanging the garden fence.
We went into the main building which is devoted to the herbarium. It is one of the biggest in the world, and contains about five million plants … and a ‘windrose’, isobars and isotherms … trails of cloud rushing round the globe which hangs on the wall.
I approached one of the cupboards, chose a shelf at random, and (amazingly) the plant of my youth was there-wormwood of the Black Sea shores-just this species of wormwood-for there are scores of varieties-a rare piece of luck, amongst five million specimens, to bump into a childhood friend.
My wormwood bore the grandiose name of ‘Artemisia Indorata, non-scented.’ This is not true. It does smell, though not so strongly as other types of wormwood. I stood in front of it for a long time. I came home, tired, but very pleased with Volume One of the History of the Botanical Institute.
Source: Vera Inber, Leningrad Diary (London: Hutchinson, 1971).