The frank and merciless truth of The Siege Diary by Olga Berggolz is a long-awaited publication from Vita Nova Automatic translate

MOSCOW. The “Siege Diary” by Olga Berggoltz without bills was published at the Vita Nova publishing house.

The Siege Diary is just a part of the poetess’s memoirs, the full version of which includes life-long recordings: from the beginning of the 1920s to the passing of life in the 1970s. The option not castrated by censorship in Soviet times could not be a priori. For the lines about the miserable efforts of the party, hatred for the government, which allowed not only the treacherous attack of the Germans, but also the unhindered surrender of the largest cities to them, one could pay with life for the words “ruthless bastards”. What is paid for freedom, she already knew. The arrest in December 1938 for communication with the enemies of the people (including the first husband who had been shot earlier) cost her the soul that was taken out, dug up by “smelly fingers” and the loss of the child she was expecting at that moment as a result of the beatings. Liberation and rehabilitation did not become her deliverance from excruciating hatred and fear. Diaries with dangerous notes were buried, nailed to the bottom of the bench so that someday people could find out the truth.

The publication uses materials that have long been in the closed archive of the RGALI. Frankness, ruthlessness in evaluations of oneself and the inhuman situation in which the hometown finds itself is rewarded with indulgence for its subsequent throwing, weaknesses and mistakes. Having become the voice of the besieged city, it is as if it is taking itself out of the system of propaganda lies, not wanting to conceal, together with the authorities, the scale of the tragedy of Leningrad suffocating from hunger. Berggoltz speaks with its residents not from the position of an outside observer, but the same as they, a suffering, lost loved ones, but not desperate person. Attempts to survive and survive where it is practically impossible require courage no less courage than participation in battles.

"Death trampling death."

Her voice became for many the thread that pulled out of despair and hunger oblivion, a testament to the fact that life goes on in the midst of torment and nightmare. Despite personal losses - death from exhaustion of her second husband, deportation to Minusinsk of a father who did not want to be an informer - she did not stop supporting people in the most bitter days. She considered a moment of fleeting joy as an excuse for her existence.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru