A Bookkeeper's Diary
Petr Kotelnikov, Diary. 1941-1943
Petr Kotelnikov, a fifty-nine-year-old bank bookkeeper, kept a diary during the Leningrad blockade. His entries trace the war as it narrowed from public mobilization to the daily arithmetic of cold, hunger, and loss. He and his wife Elizaveta dug antitank defenses, hauled water from holes cut in river ice, and tried to keep a bank functioning “as before” while rations dwindled. The diary’s force is its ordinary detail: small deceptions meant to protect loved ones, a building emptying as neighbors died or evacuated, and the resolve to keep their home repaired for those who might return.
August 21, 1941: Everyone is crowding around the announcements pasted up on the walls. This is an appeal made by Marshal Voroshilov and our Leningrad Soviet. It is two months since the Germans crossed the frontier and some say it will be a miracle if they are halted now. Well, we must achieve this miracle with our hands. My colleagues at the bank and I were sent out to help build the antitank defense works and Elizaveta, my wife, went with me. It is certainly hard for her to dig deep holes and then set logs in them, but she is cheerful and full of good spirit.
September 11: The siren is howling again like a dog when someone is dying. This is the twelfth time today ... the antiaircraft guns are pounding and just now a bomb screamed overhead, there was a dull thud and then a terrific explosion, and then came the usual shattering of windowpanes. Then another thud, and another and another. Well, so far Elizaveta and I have escaped harm, In the last three days ninety-one enemy planes were downed over Leningrad.
December 8: I don't know whether its the miracle they spoke about, but for several weeks now the Germans have not advanced. On the contrary our troops have driven the enemy back several kilometers. Leningrad is cold and dark. No fuel, no water. We have to carry water from ice holes cut in river, bringing it back in pails. Nevertheless in the bank it's very much like before the war! We go right ahead count and paying and receiving money an the livelong day. Well, at any rate our country is steadfast and so is the Soviet ruble! December 19: The books say men have to have fats and proteins and vitamins to get along. It certainly is not true. We in addition receive five ounces of bread and two glasses of hot water every day and it's enough to live on and to work too.
We are in front of the city, the Finns at our back, the Gulf of Finland on the right and Lake Ladoga on the left. It is impossible for food to come through the blockade. Yesterday I brought my ration of bread home and gave it to Elizaveta. I told her that for making hand grenades on our own time that we had received hot meals with meat and that therefore I was not hungry and all the bread was for her. She believed me as it was the first time I have ever told Elizaveta a lie about. She smiled and said: 'Even though you have eaten you might still be hungry so let us share the bread." But I refused.
January 1, 1942: Today we have a real holiday. All the build now have electricity and that is why everyone is so happy, I cannot help worrying about Elizaveta for now that I see in a bright light she looks terrible. She is swollen-looking somehow and unhealthy. I am afraid that what the books say about fats, proteins and vitamins may be true.
January 13: Our army has driven a wedge into the Germans at Tikhvin to keep them from surrounding Lake Ladoga. Beyond the lake is our own land and now that the ice is frozen motor trucks come over it to us in great numbers. At last shall have some food.
February 17: Elizaveta is dead. The vitamins which came Ladoga could not help her. I wanted to put her dear body in a pine coffin but all fuel must be carefully preserved so I buried her without any coffin.
April 14: This house is truly becoming deserted. Tenants leave on the motor trucks which go back over Ladoga, and recently I had a chance to go. They said: 'You are not young any longer. You must go into the interior." They do not understand perhaps that is the point. I am not young, therefore what happiness can I have except seeing Leningrad freed? Physical things are easier now, the sun is high and we have food. Those Germans will never see Leningrad from the inside and there is nothing miraculous about it. It is perfectly natural, for IF the Germans had taken Leningrad THAT would have been the miracle.
July 28: I visited an exhibition of paintings done by Leningrad artists. We are besieged yet we organize exhibitions. It is snug and clean at the exhibit with rugs and flowers and the paintings themselves. I do not dare to judge of the artistic merits of the paintings but I dare say this; that there has never been such an exhibition before in the entire world. I do not think Troy or Carthage or the cities besieged by Attila and Alaric held painting exhibitions!
September 16: The summer is drawing to a close and again we prepare for winter. This time we are destroying wooden houses to use as fuel. But we have stacks of grain and this winter will be easier than last. Now I am completely alone in the house, I am at one and the same time tenant, manager, doorkeeper, carpenter and electrician. Thank God the house is in good condition, for now when the tenants come back they will have a good home.
January 18, 1943: The Germans have been smashed and driven far back. Our pains and sacrifices are not in vain. The blockade is lifted! Our sufferings are over. And when the Red soldiers marched through the streets I could not keep myself from shouting: "Drive them further, Brothers! Give it to them for Elizaveta and for all the little children, for the bereaved throughout the world."
Source: Boris Skomorovsky and E. G. Morris, Siege of Leningrad (New York: Books, Inc., 1944), pp. 17-20.