Wartime Suffering and Survival: The Human Condition Under Siege in the Blockade of Leningrad, 1941-1944

"This book explores how people survive in the face of incredible odds.

When our backs are against the wall, what are our interests, identities, and practices?

When are we self-centered, empathetic and altruistic, or ambivalent?

How much agency do the desperate have-or want? Such was the situation in the Blockade of Leningrad, nearly 900 days from 1941 to 1944, in which over one million civilians died-but more survived due to gumption and creativity.

How did they survive, and how did survival reinforce or reshape identities, practices, and relations under Stalin?

Using diaries, recollections, police records, interviews, and state documents from Leningrad, this book shows average Leningraders coping with war, starvation, and extreme uncertainty.

Local relations and social distance matter significantly when states and institutions falter under duress.

Opportunism and desperation were balanced by empathy and relations.

One key to Leningrade