MILLIONAIRE

On June 22, 1941, thousands of St. Petersburg residents lined up near the military registration and enlistment offices. But there were others - those who hurried to grocery stores. They stocked up on sugar, canned food, flour, lard, vegetable oil. But not in order to feed themselves, but in order to later sell all these reserves or exchange them for gold and jewelry. Speculators charged astronomical sums for a loaf of bread or a can of condensed milk. The townspeople considered them perhaps the most terrible of the criminals operating in Leningrad during the days of the siege. BLOCKAGED LENINGRAD

SCENARIO OF SUMMER 1941

In the first days of the war, the leaders of Leningrad were confident that the enemy would never approach the city walls. Unfortunately, events began to develop according to a different scenario.

On the very first day of the blockade, September 8, 1941, the Badayevsky warehouses caught fire, leaving the city without sugar and many other products. And the card system was introduced in Leningrad only on July 18, when the Nazis were already near Luga.

Meanwhile, cunning trade workers, speculators and other far-sighted people were already filling their pantries with everything they could profit from and that could then bring in income.

Already on June 24, on the third day of the war, employees of the OBKhSS detained the Antipov sisters. One of them brought home more than a hundredweight of flour and sugar, dozens of cans of canned food, butter - in a word, everything that could be taken from the dining room where she worked as a chef. Well, the second one brought home almost the entire haberdashery store that she managed.

As the city's food supply deteriorated, the black market gained momentum and prices rose daily.

Employees of the BHSS apparatus and other police services identified those who demanded jewelry, diamonds, antiques and currency in exchange for food. The results of the searches surprised even seasoned operatives.

Often, lists with the names and addresses of communists and Komsomol members, family members of officers and soldiers of the Red Army were confiscated from speculators, along with valuables and large reserves of food. So it is a mistake to see speculators only as people who know how to make money and are not interested in politics. The war and blockade convincingly proved this.

WAITING FOR THE “NEW ORDER”

Residents of the city
stall with goods,
1943

Rukshin himself came to the attention of OBKhSS employees even before the war. He was a real eyesore, jostling near the buying points of Torgsin and Yuvelirtorg. Shortly before the war, Rukshin was caught red-handed, convicted and was in a colony. But his accomplices remained at large.

Special attention attracted a certain Rubinstein, an appraiser for one of the Yuvelirtorg purchases. He deliberately underestimated the cost of jewelry brought to the commission several times, then bought them himself and immediately resold them - either to speculators, or through dummies to the same purchase or Torgsin.

Rubinstein's active assistants were Mashkovtsev, Deitch and his sister Faina, wife Rukshina. The oldest member of the gang was 54 years old, the youngest was 34. They all came from wealthy families of jewelers. Despite all the storms that swept over the country, these people managed not only to save, but even to increase their wealth.

In 1940, Mashkovtsev found himself in Tashkent on business. And there he found a goldmine - an underground black exchange where he could buy gold coins and other valuables. The profit from the resale of valuables purchased in Tashkent was such that Mashkovtsev quit his job and completely switched to resale of gold.

Matching Mashkovtsev were Deychi's brother and sister. During the NEP they ran several stores. At the same time, Faina Deitch married Rukshin. They traded skillfully, and turned the proceeds into gold coins and other valuables. The couple continued their business even after the liquidation of the NEP. The assembled gang strictly observed the rules of secrecy. They did without receipts, and all telephone conversations were conducted in an allegorical form.

The cynicism of these people knew no bounds. Although they drowned each other during interrogations, each asked the investigators the same question: will the confiscated valuables be returned to them? And a lot was seized: three kilograms of gold bullion, 15 pendants and bracelets made of platinum and gold, 5,415 rubles in gold coins, 60 kilograms of silver items, almost 50,000 rubles in cash and... 24 kilograms of sugar, canned food. And it was August '41!

On September 8, 1941, the enemy blockade closed. Store shelves were empty, lines for bread grew, public transport stopped, telephones were turned off, and homes were left without electricity. Leningrad was plunged into darkness. On November 20, 1941, dependents began to receive 125 blockade grams.

PRODUCTS WORTH WEIGHT IN GOLD

The number of crimes in the city increased. Increasingly, police reports included information about “snatch” thefts (people’s bags with bread rations were snatched), murders because of ration cards, and robberies of empty apartments, the owners of which had gone to the front or were evacuated. The black market has started.

The products were literally worth their weight in gold. One could exchange a piece of butter, a glass of sugar or semolina for gold coins and jewelry with diamonds. At the same time, you had to look into four eyes so that you would not be deceived. Often, ordinary sand or meatballs made from human flesh were found in cans. Bottles with natural drying oil, which was made with sunflower oil, were wrapped in several layers of paper, because the drying oil was only on top, and ordinary water was poured down. In factory canteens, some products were replaced by other, cheaper ones, and the resulting surplus again went to the black market.

Typical in this regard was the case of the speculator Dalevsky, who was in charge of a small food stall. By colluding with colleagues from other retail outlets, he turned his stall into a place for pumping products.

Dalevsky went to one of the flea markets, where he looked for a buyer for his products. This was followed by a visit to the buyer. Dalevsky knew how to bargain. His room in the communal apartment gradually turned into an antique shop. Paintings hung on the walls, cabinets were filled with expensive crystal and porcelain, and in the hiding places were gold coins, precious stones, and orders.

Operatives from the OBKhSS and the criminal investigation department quickly took Dalevsky under surveillance and found out that he was especially interested in people with dollars and pounds sterling. It all started with a routine inspection at a kiosk. Naturally, Dalevsky had everything in order - penny for penny, no surplus...

Dalevsky was not afraid, believing that it was simple scheduled inspection, and continued to work according to the established scheme. Soon his stall accumulated a stock of more than a hundredweight of food. And then the OBKhSS employees showed up. Dalevsky was unable to give any explanation. I had to confess...

The seized coins and jewelry alone fetched more than 300,000 rubles at state prices. Crystal, porcelain and paintings were valued at almost the same price. It’s not worth talking about the products - in the winter of 1942 there was no price for them in besieged Leningrad.

FAKE CARDS

The police paid special attention to the work of the card bureaus. And I must say that during the most difficult days of the blockade they worked flawlessly. The most trusted people were sent here. However, unscrupulous businessmen broke through to the cards. This is exactly what the head of the card bureau of the Smolninsky district, a certain Shirokova, turned out to be. Attributing " dead Souls"And by fictitiously destroying the cards of Leningraders who had gone into evacuation, this lady made a decent amount of capital. During the search, almost 100,000 rubles in cash were seized from her.

Particular attention was paid to the fight against counterfeiters. It must be said that no one printed counterfeit money in besieged Leningrad. At the everyday level, they meant practically nothing. But food cards were in in every sense words are more valuable than any painting from the Hermitage. To the credit of the Leningrad printers who produced the cards, it must be said: not a single set left the workshop to the left, not a single employee even tried to put a set of cards in his pocket, although many had relatives who died of hunger. But still...

Farewell to the last
path, 1942

Enterprising people printed cards. This is exactly what Zenkevich and Zalomaev did. They had reservations because they worked at a factory where products for the front were manufactured. Having met the cleaner of the workshop where the cards were printed, Zenkevich and Zalomaev persuaded her to bring used letters and scraps of paper.

The printing house started working. Cards appeared, but they had to be purchased. This required establishing reliable contacts with trade workers. Soon Zenkevich and Zalomaev managed to find the right people.

The underground printing house existed for three months. Four tons of bread, more than 800 kilograms of meat, a hundredweight of sugar, tens of kilograms of cereals, pasta, 200 cans of canned food migrated into the hands of efficient businessmen... Zenkevich and Zalomaev did not forget about vodka. Using their counterfeits, they were able to obtain about 600 bottles and hundreds of packs of cigarettes... And again gold coins, jewelry, mink and seal coats were confiscated from the swindlers.

In total, during the blockade, employees of the BHSS apparatus liquidated, according to the most conservative estimates, at least a dozen underground printing houses. Counterfeiters, as a rule, were people who knew printing, had artistic training and strong connections among trade workers. Without them, all the work of printing fakes would be meaningless.

Nevsky Avenue,
winter 1942

True, there were some exceptions. In the summer of 1943, employees of the OBKhSS arrested a certain Kholodkov, who was actively selling sugar, cereals and other shortages at flea markets. Having taken Kholodkov under surveillance, the operatives quickly found out that in the summer of 1941 he was evacuated from Leningrad and got all the way to Ufa, where he started the card business. Local police officers grabbed the Ufa traders, as they say, in hot hands, but Kholodkov was able to get documents for himself and returned to Leningrad.

He settled not in the city itself, but at Pella station, where he rented half a house from some distant relatives. And although Kholodkov was not an artist, he made good cards. Seeing them, the director of one of the bakeries in the Volodarsky (Nevsky) district immediately began to boil them. Large sums of money, gold, silverware flowed into the crooks' pockets...

Well, then - the verdict of the military tribunal. This public was judged without mercy.

AFGHAN RICE FROM MALTSEV MARKET

The most unusual case for the Leningrad police was that of a certain Kazhdan and his accomplices. The threads of this story stretch from the banks of the Neva to Afghanistan.

Kazhdan was a supply worker on recovery train No. 301 and, on duty, often traveled to Tashkent, where the main supply base was located. He traveled there in a personal - admittedly, freight - carriage and sometimes stood under loading for two or three days, since military trains were loaded first of all. During one of these breaks, Kazhdan met a certain Burlaka, an employee of a foreign trade company that purchased food in Afghanistan.

Rice from Afghanistan came in thousands of bags, and Burlaka managed to negotiate for each batch to include a few extra bags for him personally. Then the rice was sold in Central Asian bazaars - usually by the glass and at an appropriate price.

Burlaka and Kazhdan met, apparently, in a commercial teahouse by chance, but they understood each other perfectly. Since each of them had an entire freight car at their disposal, it was not difficult for them to hide several bags of rice and dried fruits there. The profit from trips to Tashkent for Kazhdan and his accomplices amounted to six figures.

On the Maltsevsky market there was a small photographic studio in which the efficient boy Yasha Finkel worked. But he not only developed films and printed photographs. In a small hiding place, Finkel stored rice and other products delivered from Tashkent, distributed them among distributors, accepted money from them and reported to Kazhdan himself. Actually, the chain began to unwind from Yashin’s photo studio.

Ladies and men who frequented the photo studio attracted the attention of operatives. Pure white rice, which was confiscated from speculators, began to increasingly fall into their hands. Leningraders did not receive this kind of rice with ration cards.

It was established that this rice was Afghan; before the war, it was supplied only to Intourist restaurants through Tashkent. We quickly found out which organizations had connections with Tashkent and who sent their employees there on business trips. Everything converged on Kazhdan’s figure.

The search of a three-room apartment at 10 Rakova Street took two days. Actually, it wasn’t even an apartment, but an antique store. Expensive paintings, priest and Kuznetsov porcelain, expensive crystal, trimmed with silver...

The investigators' attention was drawn to a crib. The child slept on two mattresses. The bottom one contained almost 700,000 rubles and 360,000 US dollars in cash. Jewelry made of gold and platinum, gold coins and bars were taken out of flower pots and from under baseboards.

On June 22, 1941, thousands of St. Petersburg residents lined up near the military registration and enlistment offices. But there were others - those who hurried to grocery stores. They stocked up on sugar, canned food, flour, lard, and vegetable oil.

But not in order to feed themselves, but in order to later sell all these reserves or exchange them for gold and jewelry. Speculators charged astronomical sums for a loaf of bread or a can of condensed milk. The townspeople considered them perhaps the most terrible of the criminals who operated in Leningrad during the days of the siege. The leaders of Leningrad in the first days of the war were confident that the enemy would never approach the city walls. Unfortunately, events began to develop according to a different scenario.

On the very first day of the blockade, September 8, 1941, the Badayevsky warehouses caught fire, leaving the city without sugar and many other products. And the card system was introduced in Leningrad only on July 18, when the Nazis were already near Luga.

Meanwhile, cunning trade workers, speculators and other far-sighted people were already filling their pantries with everything they could profit from and that could then bring in income.

Already on June 24, on the third day of the war, employees of the OBKhSS detained the Antipov sisters. One of them brought home more than a hundredweight of flour and sugar, dozens of cans of canned food, butter - in a word, everything that could be taken from the dining room where she worked as a chef. Well, the second one brought home almost the entire haberdashery store that she managed.

As the city's food supply deteriorated, the black market gained momentum and prices rose daily.

Employees of the BHSS apparatus and other police services identified those who demanded jewelry, diamonds, antiques and currency in exchange for food. The results of the searches surprised even seasoned operatives.

Often, lists with the names and addresses of communists and Komsomol members, family members of officers and soldiers of the Red Army were confiscated from speculators, along with valuables and large reserves of food. So it is a mistake to see speculators only as people who know how to make money and are not interested in politics. The war and blockade convincingly proved this.

On June 22, 1941, thousands of St. Petersburg residents lined up near the military registration and enlistment offices. But there were others - those who hurried to grocery stores. They stocked up on sugar, canned food, flour, lard, and vegetable oil.

But not in order to feed themselves, but in order to later sell all these reserves or exchange them for gold and jewelry. Speculators charged astronomical sums for a loaf of bread or a can of condensed milk. The townspeople considered them perhaps the most terrible of the criminals who operated in Leningrad during the days of the siege. The leaders of Leningrad in the first days of the war were confident that the enemy would never approach the city walls. Unfortunately, events began to develop according to a different scenario.
On the very first day of the blockade, September 8, 1941, the Badayevsky warehouses caught fire, leaving the city without sugar and many other products. And the card system was introduced in Leningrad only on July 18, when the Nazis were already near Luga.
Meanwhile, cunning trade workers, speculators and other far-sighted people were already filling their pantries with everything they could profit from and that could then bring in income.
Already on June 24, on the third day of the war, employees of the OBKhSS detained the Antipov sisters. One of them brought home more than a hundredweight of flour and sugar, dozens of cans of canned food, butter - in a word, everything that could be taken from the dining room where she worked as a chef. Well, the second one brought home almost the entire haberdashery store that she managed.
As the city's food supply deteriorated, the black market gained momentum and prices rose daily.
Employees of the BHSS apparatus and other police services identified those who demanded jewelry, diamonds, antiques and currency in exchange for food. The results of the searches surprised even seasoned operatives.
Often, lists with the names and addresses of communists and Komsomol members, family members of officers and soldiers of the Red Army were confiscated from speculators, along with valuables and large reserves of food. So it is a mistake to see speculators only as people who know how to make money and are not interested in politics. The war and blockade convincingly proved this.

Speculators sought to stock up on gold and other valuables in case the Nazis came to the city and established a “new order.” There were few such people, and it is impossible to consider them as a fifth column of fascists. But they brought a lot of grief. Typical in this regard was the case of a certain Rukshin and his accomplices.
Rukshin himself came to the attention of OBKhSS employees even before the war. He was a real eyesore, jostling near the buying points of Torgsin and Yuvelirtorg. Shortly before the war, Rukshin was caught red-handed, convicted and was in a colony. But his accomplices remained at large.
A certain Rubinstein, an appraiser for one of the Yuvelirtorg purchases, attracted particular attention. He deliberately underestimated the cost of jewelry brought to the commission several times, then bought them himself and immediately resold them - either to speculators, or through dummies to the same purchase or Torgsin.
Rubinstein's active assistants were Mashkovtsev, Deitch and his sister Faina, wife Rukshina. The oldest member of the gang was 54 years old, the youngest was 34. They all came from wealthy families of jewelers. Despite all the storms that swept over the country, these people managed not only to save, but even to increase their wealth.
In 1940, Mashkovtsev found himself in Tashkent on business. And there he found a goldmine - an underground black exchange where he could buy gold coins and other valuables. The profit from the resale of valuables purchased in Tashkent was such that Mashkovtsev quit his job and completely switched to resale of gold.
Matching Mashkovtsev were Deychi's brother and sister. During the NEP they ran several stores. At the same time, Faina Deitch married Rukshin. They traded skillfully, and turned the proceeds into gold coins and other valuables. The couple continued their business even after the liquidation of the NEP. The assembled gang strictly observed the rules of secrecy. They did without receipts, and all telephone conversations were conducted in an allegorical form.
The cynicism of these people knew no bounds. Although they drowned each other during interrogations, each asked the investigators the same question: will the confiscated valuables be returned to them? And a lot was seized: three kilograms of gold bullion, 15 pendants and bracelets made of platinum and gold, 5,415 rubles in gold coins, 60 kilograms of silver items, almost 50,000 rubles in cash and... 24 kilograms of sugar, canned food. And it was August '41!
On September 8, 1941, the enemy blockade closed. Store shelves were empty, lines for bread grew, public transport stopped, telephones were turned off, and homes were left without electricity. Leningrad was plunged into darkness. On November 20, 1941, dependents began to receive 125 blockade grams.

The number of crimes in the city increased. Increasingly, police reports included information about “snatch” thefts (people’s bags with bread rations were snatched), murders because of ration cards, and robberies of empty apartments, the owners of which had gone to the front or were evacuated. The black market has started.

The products were literally worth their weight in gold. One could exchange a piece of butter, a glass of sugar or semolina for gold coins and jewelry with diamonds. At the same time, you had to look into four eyes so that you would not be deceived. Often, ordinary sand or meatballs made from human flesh were found in cans. Bottles with natural drying oil, which was made with sunflower oil, were wrapped in several layers of paper, because the drying oil was only on top, and ordinary water was poured down. In factory canteens, some products were replaced by other, cheaper ones, and the resulting surplus again went to the black market.
Typical in this regard was the case of the speculator Dalevsky, who was in charge of a small food stall. Having entered into a conspiracy with colleagues from other retail outlets, he turned his stall into a place for pumping products.
Dalevsky went to one of the flea markets, where he looked for a buyer for his products. This was followed by a visit to the buyer. Dalevsky knew how to bargain. His room in the communal apartment gradually turned into an antique shop. Paintings hung on the walls, cabinets were filled with expensive crystal and porcelain, and in the hiding places were gold coins, precious stones, and orders.
Operatives from the OBKhSS and the criminal investigation department quickly took Dalevsky under surveillance and found out that he was especially interested in people with dollars and pounds sterling. It all started with a routine inspection at a kiosk. Naturally, Dalevsky had everything in order - penny for penny, no surplus...
Dalevsky was not afraid, believing that this was just a routine check, and continued to work according to the established scheme. Soon his stall accumulated a stock of more than a hundredweight of food. And then the OBKhSS employees showed up. Dalevsky was unable to give any explanation. I had to confess...
The seized coins and jewelry alone fetched more than 300,000 rubles at state prices. Crystal, porcelain and paintings were valued at almost the same price. It’s not worth talking about the products - in the winter of 1942 there was no price for them in besieged Leningrad.


Police officers paid special attention to the work of card bureaus. And I must say that during the most difficult days of the blockade they worked flawlessly. The most trusted people were sent here. However, unscrupulous businessmen broke through to the cards. This is exactly what the head of the card bureau of the Smolninsky district, a certain Shirokova, turned out to be. By attributing “dead souls” and fictitiously destroying the cards of Leningraders who had gone into evacuation, this lady amassed a decent capital. During the search, almost 100,000 rubles in cash were seized from her.
Particular attention was paid to the fight against counterfeiters. It must be said that no one printed counterfeit money in besieged Leningrad. At the everyday level, they meant practically nothing. But food cards were, in the full sense of the word, more expensive than any painting from the Hermitage. To the credit of the Leningrad printers who produced the cards, it must be said: not a single set left the workshop to the left, not a single employee even tried to put a set of cards in his pocket, although many had relatives who died of hunger. But still…
Enterprising people printed cards. This is exactly what Zenkevich and Zalomaev did. They had reservations because they worked at a factory where products for the front were manufactured. Having met the cleaner of the workshop where the cards were printed, Zenkevich and Zalomaev persuaded her to bring used letters and scraps of paper.
The printing house started working. Cards appeared, but they had to be purchased. This required establishing reliable contacts with trade workers. Soon Zenkevich and Zalomaev managed to find the right people.
The underground printing house existed for three months. Four tons of bread, more than 800 kilograms of meat, a hundredweight of sugar, tens of kilograms of cereals, pasta, 200 cans of canned food migrated into the hands of efficient businessmen... Zenkevich and Zalomaev did not forget about vodka. Using their counterfeits, they were able to obtain about 600 bottles and hundreds of packs of cigarettes... And again gold coins, jewelry, mink and seal coats were confiscated from the swindlers.
In total, during the blockade, employees of the BHSS apparatus liquidated, according to the most conservative estimates, at least a dozen underground printing houses. Counterfeiters, as a rule, were people who knew printing, had artistic training and strong connections among trade workers. Without them, all the work of printing fakes would be meaningless.


True, there were some exceptions. In the summer of 1943, employees of the OBKhSS arrested a certain Kholodkov, who was actively selling sugar, cereals and other shortages at flea markets. Having taken Kholodkov under surveillance, the operatives quickly found out that in the summer of 1941 he was evacuated from Leningrad and got all the way to Ufa, where he started the card business. Local police officers grabbed the Ufa traders, as they say, in hot hands, but Kholodkov was able to get documents for himself and returned to Leningrad.
He settled not in the city itself, but at Pella station, where he rented half a house from some distant relatives. And although Kholodkov was not an artist, he made good cards. Seeing them, the director of one of the bakeries in the Volodarsky (Nevsky) district immediately began to boil them. Large sums of money, gold, silverware flowed into the pockets of the swindlers...
Well, then - the verdict of the military tribunal. This public was judged without mercy.
The most unusual case for the Leningrad police was the case of a certain Kazhdan and his accomplices. The threads of this story stretch from the banks of the Neva to Afghanistan.
Kazhdan was a supply worker on recovery train No. 301 and, on duty, often traveled to Tashkent, where the main supply base was located. He traveled there in a personal - admittedly, freight - carriage and sometimes stood under loading for two or three days, since military trains were loaded first of all. During one of these breaks, Kazhdan met a certain Burlaka, an employee of a foreign trade company that purchased food in Afghanistan.
Rice from Afghanistan came in thousands of bags, and Burlaka managed to negotiate for each batch to include a few extra bags for him personally. Then the rice was sold in Central Asian bazaars - usually by the glass and at an appropriate price.
Burlaka and Kazhdan met, apparently, in a commercial teahouse by chance, but they understood each other perfectly. Since each of them had an entire freight car at their disposal, it was not difficult for them to hide several bags of rice and dried fruits there. The profit from trips to Tashkent for Kazhdan and his accomplices amounted to six figures.
On the Maltsevsky market there was a small photographic studio in which the efficient boy Yasha Finkel worked. But he not only developed films and printed photographs. In a small hiding place, Finkel stored rice and other products delivered from Tashkent, distributed them among distributors, accepted money from them and reported to Kazhdan himself. Actually, the chain began to unwind from Yashin’s photo studio.
Ladies and men who frequented the photo studio attracted the attention of operatives. Pure white rice, which was confiscated from speculators, began to increasingly fall into their hands. Leningraders did not receive this kind of rice with ration cards.
It was established that this rice was Afghan; before the war, it was supplied only to Intourist restaurants through Tashkent. We quickly found out which organizations had connections with Tashkent and who sent their employees there on business trips. Everything converged on Kazhdan’s figure.
The search of a three-room apartment at 10 Rakova Street took two days. Actually, it wasn’t even an apartment, but an antique store. Expensive paintings, priest and Kuznetsov porcelain, expensive crystal, trimmed with silver...
The investigators' attention was drawn to a crib. The child slept on two mattresses. The bottom one contained almost 700,000 rubles and 360,000 US dollars in cash. Jewelry made of gold and platinum, gold coins and bars were taken out of flower pots and from under baseboards.
No less interesting were the results of searches of Kazhdan’s accomplices - Fagin, Grinstein, Gutnik. Hundreds of thousands of rubles, gold items, silverware. In total, 1.5 million rubles in cash, 3.5 kilograms of gold items, 30 gold watches and other valuables totaling 4 million rubles were seized from Kazhdan and six of his accomplices. For comparison: in 1943, the cost of a Yak-3 fighter or a T-34 tank was 100,000 rubles.
During the 900 days of the blockade, employees of the BKhSS apparatus seized from speculators: 23,317,736 rubles in cash, 4,081,600 rubles in government bonds, gold coins totaling 73,420 rubles, gold items and gold bullion - 1,255 kilograms, gold watches - 3,284 pieces. Through the OBKhSS, 14,545 people were brought to criminal liability.

In besieged Leningrad, with the onset of the most severe times, the people involved in the work became real “aristocrats.” food production. It was they who stood out from the crowd of Leningraders exhausted by hunger with their well-fed appearance, healthy skin tone and expensive clothes.

School inspector L.K. Zabolotskaya writes about the remarkable transformation of a friend:
“This was before the war - an exhausted, sick, always needy woman; she washed our clothes, and we gave it to her not so much for the sake of the linen, but for her sake: we had to somehow support her, but we had to give up on this, since she became worse at washing... Now that so many people have died of hunger, Lena blossomed. This rejuvenated, red-cheeked, smartly and cleanly dressed woman! In the summer, through the window, different voices could be heard shouting: “Lena, Lenochka! Are you home?" “Madame Talotskaya” - the wife of an engineer, a very important lady, who has now lost a quarter of her weight (I lost 30 kg) is also now standing under the window and with a sweet smile shouts: “Lena, Lenochka! I have business with you." Lena has many acquaintances and suitors. In the evenings in the summer, she dressed up and went for a walk with a group of young girls; she moved from the attic space in the courtyard to the second floor with windows on the line. Perhaps this metaphor is incomprehensible to the uninitiated, but a Leningrader will probably ask: “Does she work in a canteen or a store?” Yes, Lena works at the base! No comments needed."

Such individuals caused fair condemnation from Leningraders who were forced to starve, and many put them on a par with thieves and swindlers. Engineer I. A. Savinkin reveals for us the entire mechanism of theft in public catering:
“This is, first of all, the most fraudulent part of the population: they weigh, measure, cut out extra coupons, take our food home, feed their friends and relatives without coupons, give them cans of food to take away. The business is organized in an interesting way: a barmaid has a full staff to take food out of the dining room, the security works together, because the security guard also wants to eat - this is the first small batch of swindlers. The second larger one is the managers, assistant managers, supervising cooks, and storekeepers. There is a larger game going on here, acts of damage, loss, shrinkage, wasting are drawn up, under the guise of filling the cauldron there is a terrible self-supply. Food workers can be immediately distinguished from all other people who live only on their card. This is, first of all, a fat, well-fed carcass, dressed in silk, velvet, fashionable boots, shoes. There’s gold in your ears, a pile of gold on your fingers, and definitely a watch, depending on the scale of the theft, gold or simple.”

For front-line soldiers who returned to besieged Leningrad, the changes with people they knew became especially noticeable. In their memoirs, they describe with amazement the transformation of people who became representatives of the “aristocracy from the stove.” Thus, a serviceman who found himself in a besieged city shares with his diary:
“... I met on Malaya Sadovaya... my desk neighbor Irina Sh., cheerful, lively, even elegant, and somehow beyond her age - in a seal coat. I was so incredibly happy to see her, so hoping to learn from her at least something about our guys, that at first I didn’t pay attention to how sharply Irina stood out against the background of the surrounding city. I, a visitor from the mainland, fit into the besieged environment even better...
- What are you doing yourself? — Seizing the moment, I interrupted her chatter.
“Yes... I work in a bakery...” my interlocutor casually dropped...
...strange answer. Calmly, not at all embarrassed, a young woman, who had graduated from school two years before the start of the war, told me that she worked in a bakery - and this also blatantly contradicted the fact that she and I were standing in the center of a tormented city that had barely begun to revive and recover from its wounds. . However, for Irina the situation was clearly normal, but for me? Could this coat and this bakery be the norm for me, who had long forgotten about peaceful life and perceived my current stay in St. Petersburg as a waking dream? In the thirties, young women with secondary education did not work as saleswomen. We graduated from school with the wrong potential then... with the wrong charge..."

Even former servants, who previously occupied the lowest part of the social hierarchy, became an influential force in Leningrad. Moreover, in some cases this is interspersed with outright trading in one’s own body. Low level of aspirations gives rise to low actions. In the “time of death” of November 1941, native Leningrader E. A. Skryabina writes:
“Suddenly, my former housekeeper Marusya appeared. She came with a loaf of bread and a voluminous bag of millet. Marusya is unrecognizable. Not at all the barefoot slob I knew her to be. She is wearing a squirrel jacket, an elegant silk dress, and an expensive down scarf. And to all this, a blooming view. It was as if she had come from a resort. She doesn’t look at all like an inhabitant of a hungry city surrounded by enemies. I ask: where does all this come from? It turns out that the matter is quite simple. She works at a food warehouse, and the warehouse manager is in love with her. When those leaving work are searched, Marusya is examined only for show, and under her fur blouse she carries out several kilograms of butter, bags of cereal and rice, and canned food. Once, she says, she even managed to smuggle in several chickens. She brings all this home, and in the evening her bosses come to her for dinner and entertainment. At first, Marusya lived in a dormitory, but her foreman, taking into account all the benefits of living together, invited Marusya to live in her apartment. Now this foreman takes advantage of Marusya’s rich harvest, feeding even her relatives and friends. As you can see, this is a very resourceful person. She has completely taken possession of the stupid and good-natured Marusya and, as a special favor, sometimes exchanges food for various things. This is how the wardrobe of Marusya improved, who is delighted with these exchanges and has little interest in where her rich booty goes. Marusya tells me all this in a very naive manner, adding that now she will try to ensure that my children do not starve. Now, when I am writing this, I am thinking about what is happening in our unfortunate, doomed city: thousands of people are dying every day, and some individual people in these conditions have the richest benefit. True, during my visit to Marusya these thoughts did not occur to me. Moreover, I begged her not to forget us, offered her any things that might interest her.”

Ingratiation and servility towards such persons, unfortunately, have become a frequent phenomenon among the intelligentsia and ordinary people of Leningrad.

One of the ways to transport food in besieged Leningrad

In addition to purely physical suffering associated with hunger, Leningraders also had to experience moral suffering. Often children and women in the last stages of exhaustion had to watch the gluttony of the powerful. E. Skryabina describes an incident in a carriage for evacuees, when the wife of the head of the hospital and her children sat down to dine in public:
“We got fried chicken, chocolate, condensed milk. At the sight of this abundance of long-unseen food, Yurik (Skryabina’s son) felt sick. My throat was seized with spasms, but not from hunger. By lunchtime, this family showed delicacy: they curtained their corner, and we no longer saw people eating chicken, pies and butter. It is difficult to remain calm from indignation, from resentment, but who can I tell? We must remain silent. However, we have already become accustomed to this over many years.”

The results of such moral torment are thoughts about the falsity of the ideas of socialism, to which the majority of the city’s residents were devoted. Thoughts come about the powerlessness of truth and justice in besieged Leningrad. The basest instincts of selfish self-preservation are replacing the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity. Often this turns into a hypertrophied form. And again in the most terrible “mortal time” of the winter of 1941-42. B. Kapranov records in his diary:
“Not everyone is starving. Bread sellers always have two or three kilos left a day, and they make a lot of money. They bought everything and saved up thousands of money. The military officials, the police, military registration and enlistment office workers and others, who can get everything they need in special stores, eat too much, they eat the same way we ate before the war. Cooks, canteen managers, and waiters live well. Everyone who holds more or less an important post takes out and eats their fill... In closed stores there are many, but ours are empty. At the meeting, where questions about increasing the norm and about improvement should be decided, not the hungry are present, but all the well-fed ones, and therefore there is no improvement. Where is the freedom and equality that the constitution speaks of? We are all parrots. Is this really in a Soviet country? I’m going crazy just thinking about everything.”

V. I. Titomirova, who survived the blockade, writes in her documentary work “Hitler’s Ring: Unforgettable”:
“The blockade showed firsthand that in conditions of the strictest control, when, it would seem, everything was in sight, on record, when there was emergency power, when any violation threatened death, execution, such elements managed to flourish that were the power itself, or sophisticated criminals for whom the blockade is not a blockade, but a means of frantic profit, and borders are not borders, and there is no hunger, but they spit on the enemy and bombs. For the sake of profit, for the sake of revelry. And such people, for these reasons, also did not evacuate. They didn’t care at all.”

In the book “Diary and Memory” Kulagin G. A. raises questions that could have cost him his life during the siege:
“Why does the rear sergeant-major sport a carpet coat and is shiny with fat, while a Red Army soldier as gray as his own overcoat is on the front line getting ready to eat grass near his bunker? Why does a designer, a bright mind, a creator of wonderful machines, stand in front of a stupid girl and humiliatingly beg for a flatbread: “Raechka, Raechka”? And she herself, who cut out extra coupons for him by mistake, turns up her nose and says: “What a disgusting dystrophic!”

However, despite the tragedy of the situation in besieged Leningrad, some modern researchers argue that without speculators it would be very difficult for most residents of Leningrad to survive. Clever, quick-witted and unprincipled people were able to create a food market that saved the hungry in exchange for their valuables.