The Hermitage in Besieged Leningrad

In beleaguered Leningrad the everyday wartime life of the Hermitage began. Members of the museum staff worked on the construction of the city’s defences. The Hermitage team within the Air Raid Protection Force kept watch on the Hermitage roofs during air raid alerts, while others were on duty in the halls around the clock. In the autumn and winter of 1941, there were up to 15 air raid alerts in a 24-hour period. Altogether, the museum was hit by 30 shells fired by long-range artillery and two bombs dropped from the air. More than 20,000 square metres of glass was broken in the windows and skylights. The heating and water-supply systems were completely wrecked.

Besides the cold, shells and bombs, water posed an enormous threat to the museum’s exhibits and buildings. “I remember one day in 1942, when in our presence Piotr Petrovich Firsov, the Hermitage’s Chief Engineer, set about breaking the lock on a rusty metal door leading to the basement. When the door was opened, we saw a sea of water and, floating in it, porcelain and chandeliers that had dropped into the water from ropes when those rotted. Many were from the Pavilion Hall. In the pitch darkness we groped around and gathered sunken objects packed with mud and sand from the bottom of this sea.” Olga Mikhailova from the Department of Western European Art.

The Hermitage staff fought with all their might to save the museum: they put plywood in the windows to replace broken panes, patched up the shell holes in the roof, removed debris and broke off ice from inside the building and around it. The remaining artworks, furniture, sculptures, stone and bronze vases, porcelain, arms and armour were moved to the ground floor halls and basements. Their condition was constantly monitored, and they were cleaned and restored if needed.

Between 1942 and 1944, vegetable patches were laid out in the Hanging Garden and the Great Courtyard, and the staff grew carrots, turnips, beetroots, cabbages and potatoes, providing a saving supplement to the siege-time rations.

Besides, several artists were commissioned by the Committee for Artistic Matters to work in the Hermitage, recording the museum’s wartime existence and the destruction inflicted on it. They included Vera Miliutina, Adrian Kaplun, Vasily Kuchumov and Viacheslav Pakulin.

Scholarly Life in the Hermitage under Siege

In the cold, dark, near-deserted museum, scholarly gatherings and exhibitions were held, academic works were written, and the library functioned.

On 19 October 1941, there was a conference devoted to the 800th anniversary of the birth of the Azerbaijani poet Nizami, at which papers were presented and poems recited. A small exhibition was opened. On 10 December 1941, the museum marked the 500th anniversary of the Uzbek poet Alisher Navoi. After an opening address from Academician Orbeli, scholarly lectures and readings of translations of Navoi, the presentation took place of a porcelain goblet and little casket decorated with paintings inspired by Navoi’s works that the artist Mikhail Mokh had produced specially for the occasion. In order to fire those pieces a second time in the Hermitage, electricity to heat the muffle kiln was supplied from the Polyarnaya Zvezda, a warship anchored in the Neva close to the museum’s service entrance.

Even in the most terrible months of the siege of Leningrad, Hermitage people continued their scholarly activities. While doing duty at his posts in the museum halls, Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky wrote a book on the history and culture of Urartu; Andrei Yakovlevich Borisov engaged in deciphering Sasanian inscriptions; Alfred Nikolayevich Cube compiled a description of the collection of Italian majolica, while Pavel Pavlovich Derviz worked with the collection of European silver.

“Research staff did not let the long hours keeping watch go to waste. They filled the time with conversations on academic topics. At one time I stood duty in the Rotunda of the Winter Palace together with the splendid scholar [Andrei] Borisov, who died before his time. I would educate him in the field of archaeology, and he did as much for me in Semitic studies. Scholarly work made our hard life easier. … Those who had work to do bore the hunger more easily.” Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage (1964–90).

From the memoirs of Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky

At first, on returning to the Hermitage, people prepared to send off a third train, they were packing crates, sitting on their bundles and suitcases, but in the end remained firmly stuck in Leningrad. The encirclement was still not complete but was getting close to it. The workaday routine of the firefighting team began. There was a great deal of work to do in the Hermitage. The remaining museum valuables had to be housed in safe places; all the halls and rooms adapted to wartime conditions. Strips of paper were pasted criss-cross on the panes of the many windows, so that they would not shatter into tiny fragments when struck by a blast wave. For protection against fires piles of sand had to be carried into the halls and baths of water set up to extinguish incendiary bombs.

In the Hermitage, scholarly life was concentrated in the firefighting team that occupied several rooms in the mezzanines of the “Director’s Corridor”. The HQ was in the first room, which had desks standing in it, while the other rooms had beds. Some members of the team spent the nights in the bomb shelter with family members. The team included [Alexander] Boldyrev, [Andrei] Borisov, Rostovtsev, A. Korsun and the artist [Mikhail] Mokh, who had left his Lomonosov Porcelain Factory. Late in the evening, when things were quiet, I was fond of working by the oil-lamp, writing papers and preparing my large book on The History and Culture of Urartu. [Antonina] Izergina later used to tell people how she resented the way that, in such an alarming time and by the light of an oil-lamp, I was able to write in my consistently even hand. When everyone was asleep, the librarian [Georgy] Valter would slip into the first room and heat up tinned goods, of which he had a stock, over the spirit lamp. Still, it wasn’t a matter of food, but of nerves – of all the members of the firefighting team, Valter was the first to die.

In late November, the writer Slaventator published a short piece in Pravda about the scholarly work and lively atmosphere in our firefighting team, which [Iosif] Orbeli visited very frequently.

The Nizami Jubilee

Back in peacetime, preparations had already been underway for the celebration of the 800th anniversary of the Azerbaijani poet Nizami, but the war brought everything into question. Orbeli, however, was determined to celebrate that jubilee in the beleaguered Hermitage. […]

The jubilee conference took place on 19 October, and an invitation for the occasion was printed at the printshop of Gidrometeoizdat [the Hydrometeorological Publishing House], which was working.

The celebration took place in the “school cabinet”, where there were still showcases containing models of famous works of architecture – at one time the State Council of the Russian Empire had met in that room. Opening addresses were given by [Iosif] Orbeli and [Nikolai] Tikhonov, papers presented by [Mikhail] Dyakonov and [Alexander] Boldyrev. [Grigory] Ptitsyn recited Nizami’s poems. People were sitting in their overcoats, but everything was festive and momentous. In his feature article as a press correspondent, Tikhonov wrote: “In the magnificent Hermitage they recently marked the jubilee of the great Azerbaijani writer and lover of humanity Nizami… In sunny Baku they responded to that celebration, and across the whole Soviet Union people learnt that in Leningrad the powerful spirit of festive creativity is alive.” It was nice to meet Hermitage workers who were coming from the front. Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov also came and organized a “Babylonian feast” – in the Ancient East all festivities were accompanied by a repast; there was no celebration without a feed. He brought tinned goods – sprats, and after all the little fish had been shared out between those present, the oil in the tin was raffled off. That went to A. Korsun.

Early in November, after the November holidays, the food-supply situation grew sharply worse. The civilian population began to receive 125 grammes of bread a day, the local defending troops 200 grammes and occasionally soup, which cost 9 kopecks, and a bottle of soya milk. Sometimes half a slab of joiner’s glue would be distributed by way of dessert, while a piece of sturgeon isinglass from the restoration stocks seemed the very height of luxury. On 6 November [Militza] Matthieu and [Isidor] Lurye left for Sverdlovsk. I was appointed a professor of the Hermitage, which stood me in good stead later, and acting head of the Oriental Department. Academic life continued. The shelter of the Academy of Sciences building became the setting for discussion of the dissertation of my postgraduate student Ye.M. Kalashnikova, a relative of the Tbilisi architect (she did not survive the following period of the siege, however, and perished). I also presented a paper about Sargon’s campaign against Urartu. [Sergei] Zhebelev was present then too. We left together. He expressed satisfaction that scholarship was not perishing in the difficult conditions. That meeting with my teacher was our last, and a few days later I learnt of his death…

At the end of December and the beginning of January 1942, the supply of electricity and water ended to any significant degree. People had to get water from the Neva, from a hole cut in the ice. There was an ice-hole like that for the Hermitage people near the ramp down to the river by number 32, Palace Embankment. The hole would freeze over at night and have to be cut open again. The university professor in Arab studies Victor Belyayev was a specialist in this matter. Sometimes we would have to wait for him with an axe, and were pleased when his limping figure appeared on the ramp down to the Neva. He had been wounded in the leg during the Finnish war.

Work in the Hermitage proceeded along various lines. We had to hastily eradicate the consequences of a bombardment, replace broken window panes, sometimes whole frames, with plywood, service the bomb shelter, in which many people were living, and reliably hide away the remaining museum valuables. The firefighting team had to do the work of joiners, porters, mechanics and morgue technicians. The tragedy of daily life reflected in a written order was revealed by the long list of museum staff members removed from the rolls due to death. Those who died were predominantly people who had lived at home and came to the Hermitage when they were already in a dystrophic condition. Those who worked in the air-raid defence units held up within the team. The chief cause of death was dystrophy of the nerves, the notion that the situation was hopeless, a nervous decline in strength and lack of endurance. Those staff members who worked during the hardest days of the siege, thought, shaved, divided their meagre ration into two or three parts, slept in their free time and did not talk about food – that was strictly forbidden.

The research staff did not let the long hours keeping watch go to waste. They filled the time with conversations on academic topics. At one time I stood duty in the Rotunda of the Winter Palace together with the splendid scholar [Andrei] Borisov, who died before his time. I would educate him in the field of archaeology, and he did as much for me in Semitic studies. I already mentioned that the Hermitage firefighting team was a centre of academic work. At the end of November, a postcard from Armenia broke through the siege – from [Smbat] Ter-Avetisian, with whom I worked on Karmir Blur, Nikolai Tokarsky and the staff of Armenia’s Committee for the Preservation of Historical Monuments. It bore these lines: “… we are very pleased that you are alive and well, and that amid your great concerns you are not abandoning your scholarly work.” You can imagine how that postcard bearing the stamp of the military censor raised our spirits. Scholarly work made our hard life easier. Those who had work to do bore the hunger more easily. With time the feeling of hunger usually shifted into a physical malaise that had little resemblance to the desire to eat under normal circumstances. And like any kind of malaise, it was easier to bear while working.

The empty, thoroughly frozen halls of the museum left a big impression. When all the objects were removed, the architecture of the halls and their decoration stood out especially powerfully at night: lit up by the blazes, by the light penetrating through the partially boarded-up windows, the museum halls became fairytale-like, especially those whose walls were covered in hoarfrost. Footsteps reverberated and a human voice would echo. A black emptiness loomed in the sumptuous gilded frames, as the paintings had long since been removed from them.

 
Decorative Bowl
Leningrad Porcelain Factory named after M.V. Lomonosov
Painted decoration by Mikhail Mokh
1941 (painting)
Porcelain,
polychrome overglaze painting (on mastic),
gilding with selective polishing

Dying, they did not forget Navoi

On 10 December, the day that the trams stopped running, a festive gathering was held in the Hermitage devoted to the 500th anniversary of the poet Navoi, the founding father of Uzbek literature. After Orbeli’s opening address and a scholarly talk from [Alexander] Boldyrev, the poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, who arrived in military uniform, recited his own translations of Navoi’s verses, while a goblet and little casket specially painted for the occasion by the artist Mikhail Mokh were displayed in a showcase. Those pieces of porcelain could only be fired with the aid of the sailors. The Polyarnaya Zvezda, a floating base for submarines, frozen into the ice of the Neva near the Hermitage, extended a cable into the Hermitage basements for the muffle kiln in which these exquisite porcelain articles were fired. Two days later, the jubilee conference was continued. I presented a paper about the links between Navoi’s poems and ancient Eastern literature, while Hermitage staff member Nikolai Lebedev tirelessly recited his own splendid translations of Navoi’s works. The holding of a celebration of the culture of the peoples of the Soviet Union shows the enthusiasm with which people were able to work under difficult circumstances.

 
Decorative Casket
Leningrad Porcelain Factory named after M.V. Lomonosov
Shape by Serafima Yakovleva, 1938
Painted by Mikhail Mokh, 1941
Porcelain; polychrome overglaze painting, gilding

At the conference devoted to Navoi, Lebedev was only half alive physically when he spoke. He could barely move from exhaustion, yet he had to be reined back over the excessive number of poems he had selected to read. After the second session, on 12 December, he took to his bed and was no longer able to get up.

 
Decorative Casket (underside)
Leningrad Porcelain Factory named after M.V. Lomonosov
Shape by Serafima Yakovleva, 1938
Painted by Mikhail Mokh, 1941
Porcelain; polychrome overglaze painting, gilding

The text reads:
Leningrad
The Hermitage
500th Anniversary of the Great Uzbek
Poet Alisher Navoi
1441 * 1941
“The Seven Planets”
⸪ Wednesday [Mercury] ⸪
*
Artist M.N. Mokh
7.XII.1941

Yet while he was slowly dying on his bunk in the bomb shelter, despite his physical weakness, he shared his plans for future works and recited his translations and poetry. Even when he lay dead, covered with a colourful Turkmenian rug, it seemed as if he was still whispering his verses.