A Teacher's Diary

E. I. Kochina, Blockade Diary. 1941-1943

In these November 1941 diary entries, the Leningrad teacher and young mother Elena Iosifovna Kochina recorded the siege as a steady tightening of life itself. Bread rations shrank, the loaf turned into wet, gluey “clay,” and survival produced its own bleak improvisations, from ersatz “cuisine” to boiling soil from the burned Badaev warehouses. Kochina also captured the moral abrasion of hunger in domestic form: suspicion, shame, and fury, as food disappeared at home and even the bread counter felt like a place of theft and humiliation.

Translated by Samuel C. Ramer

13 November 1941

They've cut the bread ration once more. On a worker's ration card they now give you ten and one-half ounces. On the card of a clerk, dependent, or child-five and one-quarter ounces.

15 November 1941

Famine is approaching!

Our personal reserves are finished. An original Leningrad cuisine has developed: we've learned to make doughnuts out of mustard, soup out of yeast, hamburgers out of horseradish, and gelatin out of joiner's glue. Many bring in soil that contains charred sugar from around the Badaev warehouses. They boil it, filter it, and make coffee.

20 November 1941

They've reduced the bread ration. They now hand out eight and three-quarters ounces on a worker's card and four and three-eighths ounces on cards of clerks, dependents or children.

This is a very small piece. It's heavy, sticky, and damp. The bread contains all kinds of junk and only a little flour.

23 November 1941

Today I got an extremely small piece of bread with my ration card.

Why so small?

"The bread's very damp," the woman behind the counter answered. It seemed to me that she was looking at me with derision. I felt the bread. It really was damp. I returned home upset.

"She's lying! She's simply stealing!" Dima shouted.

For some time we looked morosely at the bread, which lay on the table like a piece of clay.

"Bah! The professor has some scales!" he shouted abruptly and, grabbing the bread, disappeared.

"There's three and a half ounces missing!" he declared on returning.

Three and a half ounces! What a filthy bitch!

I ran back to the bread store, determined to win back my bread no matter what.

But the woman behind the counter., having heard me out) silently cut and weighed three and a half ounces. How about that! The cat knows whose meat he ate!

25 November 1941

I still have fourteen ounces of millet for Lena. (Now I curse myself for buying only four and one-half pounds in the commercial store. What a fool I was!)

I cook soup for her in a teacup and boil it with potato flour. However, I've noticed that during the last few days the millet is quickly disappearing. It's got to be Dima who is eating it. Every day when I leave the house I hide it in a new place: in the chimney, under the bed, under the mattress. But he finds it everywhere.

"Why are you taking the millet?" I asked him, running out of patience.

"What millet?" he made a surprised face and stared at a point on the wall above my head. I turned around dramatically and also looked there. Then I shouted, enraged:

At least don't lie.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dima mumbled indistinctly.

It was as if his tongue had swollen and wouldn't fit into his mouth. Maybe he really isn't touching the grain. It's hard enough for him as it is, and on top of that I'm tormenting him.

26 November 1941

Today, when I unexpectedly came into the room, I found Dima hurriedly chewing the millet.

"Don't you dare cat it!" I yelled, losing control of myself.

Shut up. I can't help myself.

His eyes looked at me with despair. He didn't avert them as he has these past few days.

I involuntarily shut up, and my anger passed. I began to pity him. After all, by giving me his lunch, he had started to suffer from hunger before I did. And even now he is suffering more, since I've always been indifferent to food. But he was something of a "glutton," as all men are.

28 November 1941

I now take the millet with me when I leave the house. Not much of it is left. Dima is angry at me for this, but he keeps quiet.

2 December 1941

Lena's millet is gone.

3 December 1941

Before the war we were often anxious about money.

But now we don't think about it at all. We don't need money -just a few kopecks a day for bread.

4 December 1941

When I woke up, I noticed that somehow the room was strangely shaking. I reached over and touched the wall. It was all right, which meant that something was the matter with me. Holding on to the bed, I stood up carefully. Dima and Lena lay without stirring. For several days we haven't eaten anything except bread. I decided to try to get some food with our ration cards. Out on the street I roamed from store to store for a long time. They were all empty. Even baking soda and lemon acid have disappeared from the shop windows.

Suddenly a cart with boxes began to creep around the corner. On the boxes sat a stooped man who looked like a shaggy dog. A crowd dragged along behind the cart as if behind a coffin. I joined this peculiar "funeral procession." It turned out that there was macaroni in the boxes, but nobody knew where they were taking it. The man remained stubbornly silent. Catching sight of a store ahead of us, we raced one another there and', exchanging abuses, formed a line like trained animals. But the horse, squinting in our direction with kind eyes, pulled the cart past us. Breaking away from our places, we ran after it. This occurred about five times, and each time we set up the line, we raged, beat up on each other, and felt on edge.

At last the cart stopped at one of the stores. Nearby there was a long line. Making a loop, it went around the corner like a long tapeworm and disappeared behind us. I took a look around the corner: the end of the line was not in sight. The line had been there since the previous evening.

Depressed, I returned to the store.

The manager, like the "gatekeeper of paradise," counted off the "faithful souls, letting them inside ten at a time. I stood and gazed mindlessly at this "procedure." I don't know what was written on my face, but suddenly an old woman in the line asked me softly:

When is your turn?

I answered that I wasn't in line, and that to take a place in line now was useless since there wouldn't be enough macaroni for everyone anyway. And I added, unexpectedly for myself, that I had a small child at home that I didn't know how I was going to feed. She said nothing. But when the door opened and they started counting off a new party of "fortunates," she said loudly:

"Why aren't you paying attention! After all, you were standing behind me!" and shoved me toward the door. She herself stayed on the street, since I was the tenth person. I was so stunned that when the macaroni (twenty-eight ounces for two months) appeared in my hands, which were trembling with excitement, I still couldn't believe that what had happened was real.

Without feeling my feet beneath me, I ran home, chased by a many-voiced shout that nipped at my heels like a hound.

Where are they handing out macaroni?

Turning home from the street, I saw a piece of green paper in the crack of our door. This turned out to be an inquiry from my friend Tatyana Matveeva, with whom I had worked before the war, about my place of residence. I read and reread these few handwritten fines with amazement. Someone had brought this note and put it in my door. And others had made inquiries and found me." Which meant that some institutions were still working. The post office. Somebody was performing the mailman's job, walking on foot from one end of the city to the other) climbing the dirty, hoarfrosted stairs, wandering along the dark recesses of hallways and the deserted wasteland of apartments and, finally, upon finding the addressee, perhaps meeting the open mouth and clenched teeth of a stiffened corpse instead of a thankful smile.

"And they arc surely feeling just as bad as we are," said', handing the inquiry to Dima. After he read it, he silently put it on the table, but I saw that he was just as astonished as I was.

I scratched out several words to Tatyana with the gnawed end of a pencil.

5 December 1941

A ferocious winter has set in. The temperature is 22 degrees below zero."

Deep blue shadows lie like a fantastic design on the fluffy, sparkling snow, which no one clears away.

The city stands silent, holding its breath, tensely taking its own weakened pulse. Neither children's laughter nor dogs' barking can be heard.

6 December 1941

Today in some old junk I found a box of wallpaper glue made out of macaroni waste products. It weighed over two pounds!

This is terrific! We couldn't believe our eyes. Dima immediately shoved a whole handful of the glue into his mouth. I tore the box out of his hands.

Wait, let's at least cook it!

"Let's make porridge," Dima urged, folding his arms imploringly.

Oh no," I replied decisively, "were going to make soup, putting in three and a half ounces of glue for every day's serving. Then it will last us for ten days.

"You're right, of course," he sadly agreed. "You're always right," he added maliciously.

Source: E. I. Kochina, Blockade Diary (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1990), pp. 46-52.