The Spectacle of The Besieged City - Repurposing Cultural Memory in Leningrad, 1941-1944

The Spectacle of the Besieged City: Repurposing Cultural Memory in Leningrad, 19411944 Author(s): Polina Barskova Source: Slavic
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The Spectacle of the Besieged City: Repurposing Cultural Memory in Leningrad, 1941-1944
Polina Barskova
Acute Oppositions In January
of the Siege
Cityscape
a member in of Leningrad's technical 1942, Dmitrii Lazarev, con in and and and optics camouflage, telligentsia, engineer specialist noisseur of music and theater, wrote in his diary: Though we had put the body ofmy father-in-law in a cold room, the time had nevertheless come to bury him. Our trip . . . seemed endless. Finally
were at the gates of the morgue?a former woodshed. Opening
we
. . .
the door, we saw in the moonlight a high pile of corpses, some dressed any old way, and some wrapped in bed sheets.We began our ascent to the top of the pile, climbing over frozen and slippery-as-ice stomachs, backs, and heads. Despite the cold, the stench in the shed was overpowering.... We felt a dull indifference to the death of a loved one. The way back was easier. We even stopped for a minute, struck by the unusual beauty of besieged Leningrad in themoonlit night. There was no movement of any sort, no pedestrians at all. The houses with their black shadows looked like a grandiose stage set for some surreal performance.1 What makes this tragic text unusual, what sets it apart from other, at times equally horrific, historical accounts of the twentieth century? common to find in narratives of historical trauma that It is remarkably survivors and witnesses death," "psychological temporarily experience can neither nor in its losing sensitivity to pain they digest conceptualize on this article, I traveled for a week in While immediacy.2 working July the former Leningrad and site of the siege, and 2008 between Petersburg, some of the site of the Auschwitz death camp, where Poland, Oswi^cim, most massive "racial" purges of the Nazi genocide took place. This geo to sharpen the focus of this "transfer" helped is graphical project, which to assess how individuals subjected to historical to relate their catastrophe
like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Slavic Review and Mark D. for Steinberg for their merciless their perceptive Avram Brown and Jane Hedges yet subtle suggestions, of the siege, Iurii and Sophiia and the Petersburg scholars Vera Lovia Kolosov, editing, their for and and Boris Prutt, Firsov, generous gina, Olga help inspiration. v blokade: iz dnevnika," 1. D. N. Lazarev, "Leningrad Vyderzhki Trudy gosudarstven no. 5 (2000): istorii Sankt-Peterburga, 203. nogo muzeia I would
term is in V dni Neratova 2. This khronika suggested by Rimma voiny: Semeinaia one of his that dur (St. Petersburg, 1996), 94. Vitalii Bianki reports strongest impressions a visit to the was that narrate would the horrors of the deadly ing city in 1942 Leningraders winter "Gorod, (St. Petersburg, 2005), smiling. Bianki, kotoryi pokinuli ptitsy," Likholet'e as a stress disorder result of 172. On emotional (PTSD), numbing frequent post-traumatic see Bessel A. van der Kolk, to Trauma," "The of Adaptation in Bessel A. van der Complexity C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth, Stress: The Effects of Over Kolk, Alexander eds., Traumatic translation of the mechanism of psychological trauma into terms of collective Cultural Trauma," 2004), (Berkeley, cultural con
2d ed. (NewYork, 2007), 183-213. On the Mind, Body, and Society, Experience on whelming
see Neil J. Smelser, et al., eds., Cultural Trauma "Psychological Trauma and Collective and in Jeffrey C. 31-60.
ceptions, Alexander
Identity
SlavicReview 69, no. 2 (Summer 2010)
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from afar and robbed of their identities and cultural roots?3 What if, a instead, this site is, like Leningrad, city of immense historical value and a architectural grandeur, consisting of diverse levels of histori palimpsest and cal, cultural, personal memory?4 This article investigates the various was methods which and rechanneled. As I see by siege trauma suppressed a to of these methods amounted reactivation the aestheticized it, past; was it paradoxically, during the gravest period of the city's modern history that its cultural memory became crucial for its inhabitants' psychological and emotional survival. account is the para One of the most shocking elements of Lazarev's doxical intervention of beauty into the zone of horror, of artifice into the to observe realistic narration of death. Lazarev and his helper pause the amazes unusual of the The "unreal" and frozen, empty city. beauty city touches the very real death of Lazarev's father-in-law does them, while not. Can we understand this gaze as a quest for reaction, for some kind of active dialogue the agent and the object of the gaze, a dialogue between to horror that failed to take place at the improvised morgue? The response a to to be replaced here by appears response beauty. But what consolation can artifice undo or even assuage lies in the "stage set"?how the effect a a less produced by pile of corpses? Or does the pile of corpses become scene an if real urban stage and illuminated by moonlight? arranged upon in the second half of the twentieth century Human consciousness seems to find the of beauty and horror, of aesthetic plea juxtaposition a most crucial and uneasy sure and as Theodor physical suffering, topic; so in his dictum of Adorno seminal formulated 1949: "Nach distinctly zu schreiben This phrase ein Gedicht ist barbarisch." Auschwitz epito mized "the fear that aesthetic pleasure negates horror, by aestheticizing in the face of outrage, or violence and atrocity, by proposing redemption encounter in consolation the with by providing beauty."5 Lazarev was only one of the many citizens of besieged Leningrad struck by the both deeply disconcerting and powerful contrast between of Leningrad the winter of 1941 the "form" and "content" during
3. On Granof, and representations Peter Hayes, of eds., the German The Last campscapes, Art see David Corinne Mickenberg, and Auschwitz (Evanston, 2003),
if the site of the mass death cultural environment. What is not covered with faceless barracks, not separated from the world outside by rows of barbed wire nor fashioned from the rubble of adjacent villages destroyed to for the camp? What if it is not completely materials provide building without history and meaning for its victims, who have not been brought here
Holocaust 4.
The Influenceof the 24-50, 236, 244, 248; Ziva Amishai-Maisels, Depiction and Interpretation:
on the Visual take that Iwould Arts (Oxford, 32-42. 1993), issue with Lisa Kirschenbaum's 'tell its past,'" asking help Leningraders of the siege? disaster statement to what that "it is not extent did instead: resist the city's build the buildings and numbness and amnesia
Expression:
ings and streets monuments of induced
5. Janet Wolff, in and Florence Art," Shelley Hornstein tation and the Holocaust (Bloomington,
Leningrad by the historical 1941-1995: of Leningrad,
the emotional
Myth, Memories, "The Iconic and the Allusive:
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, and Monuments (Cambridge, The Case eds., Image
The Legacy of the Siege 14. Eng., 2006), in Post-Holocaust for Beauty and Remembrance: Represen
Jacobowitz, 165. 2003),
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
329
Figure 1. B. P. Svetlitskii, U Sphinksov (By the Sphinxes, 1942). From Nina N. ed., Podvig veka. Khudozhniki, skul'ptory, arkhitektory, iskusstovovedy Papernaia, v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny i blokady Leningrada. Vospominaniia. Dnevniki. Pis'ma. Ocherki. Lit. zapisi (Leningrad, 1969), 318. collision provided by mournful processions making their an was the within often architectural "frame" way through city expressed to Lazarev's in parallel in terms of ambiguity. For example, the account, architect Boris Svetlitskii executed dozens of works that winter depicting on the Leningraders dragging corpses legendary children's sleds through the vast empty squares, past such architectural landmarks as the Sphinxes, reac St. Isaak's Cathedral, Bronze the Horseman. One's Dvor, Gostinyi tion to Svetlitskii's urban scene might be ambiguous: the "frame" of the and the embankment the viewer, both soothes and confuses Sphinxes as an distraction (see serving compositional figure 1). overpowering
a student account in the Russian of Sofia Gotkhart, Literature of department twist to the frequent Institute, gives an unexpected Pedagogical diary topos of to the cultural environment." in reaction the "siege burial procession "We put two She writes: to children's sleds one behind the other, tied them together, and tied my uncle's body this contraption. Our way was than four kilometers long?more along Nevskii Prospect, 6. The the Herzen
42.b The
aesthetic
moroz i solntse], Sadovaia Street. The day was all frost and sun [ Liteinyi Prospect, everything was we saw on to In order And the whole dead sleds." the way, people highlight sparkling. who attended G. A. Gukovskii's lectures on Russian Romantic contrast, Gotkhart, shocking uses Aleksandr that whole Pushkin's celebrated line from "Zimnee utro" winter, poetry v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine. Sofia Dve Gotkhart. Leningrad. Blokada. Isaak (1829). sud'by Kleiman. Riga. Getto. (St. Petersburg, 2006), 63.
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The imbalance between modalities?private internal suffering on the one hand, and the on the external of visual public, opulence impression other?often led citizens to react with rhetorical, open-ended questions the confusing juxtapositions offered by the siege urbanscape. regarding "In The poet and diarist Vera Inber inquires with frustrated puzzlement: the use of these translucent expanses, the silver / The crystal of gardens, of water?"7 At times the citizens' ability to distinguish between the beauti ful and the horrific appears "normal" psychological completely distorted; seem to "freeze" in response to the reactions of frozen urban spectacle death found turned under the snow into (macabre corpses siege irony to tame the horror it as Observers attempt by formulating snowdrops)* the is and shielded therefore spectacle: unpresentable tempered by the actor of The Nikitin Fedor writes: terminology beauty. At the intersection of Stremiannaia and Marat streets, I was struck by [the following] spectacle. On the pavement lay a rectangle of ice . .. as if carved from the Gulf [of Finland], and inside, a beautiful young woman in a green dress. Her face was not at all deformed; her blue eyes were open and staring into the distance; her copper red hair had frozen in threads through the ice and become a sort of continuation of her head. the ice version. The spectacle was so beautiful that at This was Ophelia, first you couldn't experience it as tragically horrific.9 The dov, who actor's observation recounts: closely echoes that of the artist Valentin Kur
this city, inwhich the ranks of the sick and the dead multiply, /What's
I see an American cracker box. Inside the box, I see the frozen body of a small child. In this frost, the baby looks like a cherub with ice-covered eyelashes. I pause, struck by the strange and inexplicable beauty of this spectacle. The splendid classical architecture of our city seemed incom un patible with the American cracker box and the child's dead body. I derstood that I had encountered a super-fantastic reality that no sound logic could encompass.10 can be seen as formulations of the quintessential of the the contradictions siege. by spectacle engendered psychological sublime that produces Here we might ask: between the Kantian pleasure horror as juxta sublime that engenders through pain and the Burkean to beauty, which formulation to the siege spectacle?11 corresponds posed loss and to some de traumatized by physical and psychological Although These accounts
Dusha 17. 7. Vera Inber, "Pulkovskii Meridian," 1979), Leningrada (Leningrad, 8. Bianki, "Gorod, kotoryi pokinuli ptitsy," 180. museum "Amuzy of siege culture dnevnik" 9. Fedor Nikitin, (manuscript, "Blokadnyi ne molchali," 105-6. School 235, St. Petersburg), 10. Valentin 11. Kurdov, Kant, Immanuel dni igody (St. Peterburg, 182-83. 1994), Pamiatnye on the and Sublime Observations Feeling of theBeautiful [ 1763], trans.
John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley, 1991), 47-48; Edmund Burke, A PhilosophicalEnquiry into Sublimeand the the Beautiful [1757] (Oxford, 1990), 36. For an il Origin ofOur Ideas of the
on aesthetics of these theories of the sublime in the discussion of the influence luminating see Brett context Unwanted of the historical of the twentieth century, Kaplan, upheavals inHolocaust 1-18. For useful appli 2007), (Urbana, Representation Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
331
instead of creating pronounced siege sublime is thoroughly oxymoronic: as both Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant posit, it brings distinctions, uncombinable notions and with the resulting super reactions, together as or "unreal" "surreal."13 imposition usually described of the siege sublime by way This study will examine the phenomenon How did the citizen of besieged of the following questions: Leningrad were construe and use urban the possible functions and beauty? What of the city's cultural memory meanings during the siege? To what extent a strategy of did representing the endangered constitute city psychological a survival and of preserving the site described? Envisioning siege sublime that operates by filling the lacunae of psychological loss with "anesthetiz this study aims to trace the specific mechanism of ing" cultural material, such gap-filling. It is important to note the immediacy of the urge to aestheticize. After the fact, artists often deny, or their audience and critics often deny, the means of and for consolation of beauty; but what necessity possibility by could be the function of beauty at the very moment of historical pain? to Many diarists insist that the immediacy of their aesthetic response events and to the siege is paramount: risk appear impressions forfeiting ifnot represented in a timely manner.14 The artist Iaro their authenticity on this slav Nikolaev elaborates important distinction between depicting on the spot and from memory: the besieged city "Nowadays when artists as was to it the the color try siege, it is precisely depict Leningrad during ... come across. It comes out wrong. I can't quite put my that doesn't on that color, that was sickly, and finger light. It powerful, and amazingly
see Christine to the discussion cations of the sublime of theories of modernity, Battersby, The Sublime, Terror and Human (London, 2007). Difference s 14. Svidanie 12. Konstantin Fedin, 1945), Leningradom (Leningrad, as an aesthetic to the 13. My formulation of the siege sublime reaction challenge of the unrepresentability of history is informed other the gulag sub sources, by, among lime that Harriet Murav claims: "The writer and posits reader based
still reveled in aesthetic plea disabled, gree emotionally Leningraders sure in response to the beauty of their environment instead of remaining on one witness's trapped with the notion of horror. Building pinpointing a I propose of a certain vozvyshennost' (sublime), explicating siege sublime between the horrific and the beauti that does not lie in the distinction to in the horrific with the but rather the observer's ful, tendency replace or as to reconstruct I suggest that the the horrific beautiful.12 beautiful,
on Aleksandr oeuvre. Murav especially Solzhenitsyn's of the Gulag share a similar feeling of individual powerless ness. These conditions and effects, taken together, permit us to see this text as a particu text serves lar form of the sublime. The theme of the unrepresentable in Solzhenitsyn's to bind readers Harriet individual Russia's Murav, (Ann Arbor, together." Legal Fictions 14. Nikitin this anxiety with particular is full; I expresses poignancy: "My notebook to put to my own amazement, as if obsessed. in it. Still I write, managed only eight days a me as material, Does sense? Some be useful any of my writing make day all this might an is forgotten, ticulous, scrupulous analysis of the air of irreproducable epoch: everything I write in detail, if I don't and the little details events; evaporate. immediately following write the same day, I find that a lot gets lost forever." Nikitin, things down "Blokadnyi 138. dnevnik,"
1998), 188.
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that impressed him during that fateful winter (see figure 2). Leningraders were due to their extreme physical and psychologi especially perceptive their attention on their cal state; their slow, plodding walks concentrating and visual "Hunger greatly sharpened impressionability surroundings: fell whatever one's and the dead, and the gaze memory: upon?the living to whole beautiful dead city?was committed memory."18 of urban beauty is a common topos for siege diarists. Rediscovery on this for the architect Lev Some commented example, enthusiastically; at war is laconic, irin exclaims: "The sight of Leningrad simple, and beau tiful. Itmust be said that during this winter, with all its horrors, people's "19 is our city! These ecstatic eyes as ifopened; everyone says: how beautiful of the city, these ways of seeing the city anew echo the im appreciations we find, for example, pression of strengthening kinship with the city that a young art student in the diary of Elena Manilla, during the siege: "I have to cross the whole city to get to the School of Arts. It's very far but I find it interesting: to walk and walk and walk. From now on, the city and I are
connected forever."20
it came from within, from a different state of being, a Perhaps different mode of perception.15 contact with the beauty of the siege was Furthermore, urbanscape framed and intensified by routines?for walks example, by daily through citizens had towalk many miles at a time: to get the lifeless city. Emaciated to water or food, to get to their place of work or, as in Lazarev's account, their loved ones.16 "bury" As a ten-year-old, Iurii Kolosov worked at Smornyi party headquarters as a courier, the city during the siege: carrying important parcels around me constant to as routes the "My through city gave ample opportunity sess the ex character of the the It be of could appearance unique siege. masses snow that the of would clear which away, by plained huge nobody an eerie 'ur lighting effect, and by the scarcity of peacetime produced etc. The looked ban distractions': ads, slogans, city unusually pristine."17 Kolosov's city siege diary is filled with the sketched views of the besieged beautiful.
This
connection
between
wartime
horrors
and a new quality of vision,

ed., Podvigveka. Khudozh
15.
grada.
144. Dnevniki. Ocherki. Lit. zapisi (Leningrad, Pis'ma. 1969), Vospominaniia. movement: note the citizens' intensified it is "slow" and 16. Many diarists "silent," "Blokad in its scale. See Nikitin, Lebedev, 89; Georgii dnevnik," yet "epic" "Blokadnyi Russkii muzei, Otdel 10 April 1942, manuscript, nyi dnevnik," rukopisei Gosudarstvennyi 1 July 2008. Iurii Kolosov, interview, St. Petersburg, 18. Neratova, Vdni voiny, 97. Iz zapisok L'va Alek 19. Lev Il'in, "Progulki po Leningradu. arkhitektury professora in sandrovicha 273. ed., Podvigveka, H'ina," Papernaia, GRM OR, f. 100, op. 570. For additional 20. Elena Manilla, "Dnevnik," manuscript, on Martilla the siege, see Cynthia Simmons information and her artistic activity during and Documen the Siege ofLeningrad: Womens Diaries, Memoirs, and Nina Perlina, eds., Writing 17.
v godyVelikoi Lenin Otechestvennoi niki, skul'ptory, voiny i blokady arkhitektory, iskusstovovedy
Iaroslav
Nikolaev,
"18 ianvaria..."
in Nina
N.
Papernaia,
(GRM OR),f.
100, op. 484.
Prose (Pittsburgh,2002), 177-283; Michael Jones, Leningrad: State ofSiege (New York, tary 2008), 142-73.
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
333
Figure 2. Entry from the diary of Iurii Kolosov

personal archive of Iu. I. Kolosov. Used with
(5 February
1942). From
the
permission.
anew the allure of the the poi ability to appreciate city, engendered ostrota of notion often discerned gnant by critically (acuteness/sharpness) now became minded observers. forme something even greater "Leningrad than itwas before?and in its present appearance. It is such an precisely one feels heartache. acute to that I would like landscape paint [napisat'] and reproduce acute and this landscape?its [peredat'] all this destruction, to The is used in character."21 Russian tragic adjective ostryi (acute/sharp) define levels of intensity, including for both pain and vision. Paradoxically, the urbanscape in the descriptions above can both evoke and ease pain; by can also refresh one's vision. its stimulating creativity, beauty Another dimension of this acuteness is its frequent use to express the nature conflicted of the oxymoronic, siege cityscape evident, for example, in the following description Inber: by
3HMa Ee Komia HeT pocKomecTByeT. h me^poTaM. BejiHKOJienbHM
an
IlapKeTaMH 3epicajibHoro Topiia B rojiyGbie rpoTbi CKOBana 3eMJTK>. Ilpeo6pa3HJia nepHbie ztBopbi.
AjiMa3bi. BjiecK . . . He#o6pbie /tapbi!
21. Bol'she,
1993), 388.
Pavel Kondrat'ev, chem vospominan'ia:
letter Pis ma
to V.
F. Matiukh
leningradskikh
(10 May khudozhnikov,
in Boris Suris, ed., 1944), 1941-1945 (St. Petersburg,
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Slavic Review
3aicaT HO
cyxyMCKOH po30H JHOTOH He?CHOCTbK)
. . . po30BeeT BCe 3TO BeeT.
(Winter is luxuriant. There is no end To its splendors and bounties. It has bound the earth in a parquetry Of mirrored paneling. It has turned Backyards into blue grottoes. Diamonds. Glitter. Evil gifts. Sundown shows pink like a Sukhumi rose, But all of this smacks of ferocious tenderness.)22 The architect Aleksandr Nikol'skii stillmore concisely, even ironically, ex the subtext of paradoxical besieged Leningrad's posed beauty?namely, his playful "slogan": the constant threat hanging over the city?with
TyjiflH no 3toh KpacoTe, ho noMHH npaBHjia B <oeHHOH>T<peBorH>.
(Walk amidst this beauty but remember
the rules of the air raid siren.)23
the twin spectacles of urban death and urban tral opposition between an text This also beauty. impression of rhetorical instability by produces the cramped several other space of the unbalancing binary oppositions: contrasts of this with the the beautiful morgue yet lifeless emptiness city; or seems more than its alive somehow animate inhabitants, dead, who city are dead do not look like people, virtually bereft of human features?the while the living almost fail to feel like people.24 sen the point that oxymoronic This intense clashing of opposites?to as to rhetorical be leads confluence?might interpreted alerting sibility us to the connection of besieged and the discourse between Leningrad to field-defining articles by Vladimir Topo text. According the Petersburg as a united para rov and Iurii Lotman, text functioned the Petersburg nature and of chaos and order, individual and culture, digm polarities: states and future and crisis.25 state, enlightenment Toporov despotism,
22.
in descriptions of the experi One of the central rhetorical devices ence of account is the establishment of The siege beauty oppositions. by this article opens is not limited to undoing the cen Lazarev with which
17-18. Inber, "Pulkovskii Meridian," in "Akademik 281. 23. A. S. Nikol'skii, ed., Podvigveka, arkhitektury," Papernaia, in of death Len often remark the dehumanization 24. Diarists upon besieged . . . non-human or was death. like old brushwood looked "This such dry They ingrad. was mass of planks?an frozen horrified?people just ignored icy together. Nobody piles in grim affirmation of Roman Jacobson's argument in "The Statue in Pushkin's Poetic
it,and if theydid look at it?then without any feeling." Neratova, V dni voiny,69. As if
of the animate/inanimate opposition in The Bronze Mythology" regarding the instability

Horseman, drawing: subtitles his for the Petersburg the originating text, Iakov Rubanchik template was dead, for the sentry lions standing on the front steps with except "Everything i dnevnik: Zhivopis' ed., Blokadnyi paws, as if alive." V E. Loviagina, grafika blokad upturned 144. 2005), nogo vremeni (St. Petersburg, tekst russkoi literatury: Izbrannye 25. V. N. Toporov, trudy (St. Petersburg, Peterburgskii i in Trudy Iu. M. Lotman, semiotiki goroda," "Simvolika 7-66; 2003), problemy Peterburga
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
335
is in its antithetic and antinomic of Petersburg to any be reduced singularity: it puts death itself as if to achieve some of the new life, as if in redemption, . text the level [. .] expresses Petersburg quintessentially higher spiritual life on the edge, over the abyss, at the threshold of death, where the way to salvation be conceived."26 might The paradoxical combination of peril and beauty has lain at the foun text since its inception; dation of the Petersburg it is a text defined by constant conflict and opposition. If we accept that the text of besieged text are interconnected, and the Petersburg what are the man Leningrad ifestations and mechanisms of this kinship? character, which at the foundation that "the inner meaning cannot They Remembered Me: The Influence of the Petersburg on of Besieged Representations Leningrad Text
in The Bronze Horseman, that matrix of the Petersburg text, we can Already see how the description of the city at all levels. . . . governs "opposition Much of the complexity of the poem lies in the surprising relation between as are established the terms of the opposition in the Prologue and the they value they are given in the narrative."27 After Aleksandr Pushkin, for most of the nineteenth century there seem to have existed two separate, even modes of the Petersburg and negative.28 The opposed, text?positive at mode in least the urban-oriented works "negative" obviously prevailed Nikolai Nekra Krestovskii, Fedor Dostoevskii, Gogol', Vsevolod turn at the others. But of the twentieth sov, Vsevolod Garshin, among two most prom these recombine. One of the century, poles paradoxically inent instances of convergence text of the two modes of the Petersburg was Aleksandr Benois's manifesto "Zhivopisnyi Peterburg" (Picturesque For Benois, the unique charm of the city lies in the fact that Petersburg). at the same time: it can be deadly and dying, terrifying and beautiful "Look at the physiognomy of the city?and will strike you Petersburg ... It is a stone co as horrid, merciless, but also beautiful and charming. lossus of sorts?monstrous Its cold, terrible gaze always and fascinating. attracts can A "of locus melancholic and you."29 sickly beauty," Petersburg anew be if artists "fall in love this saved with from thus it only city, saving the peril of barbaric perversion."30 Benois declares that the "real" Peters of its conception?empty, somewhat dangerous, burg is the Petersburg
i gorodskoi znakovym sistemam, vol. 18, Semiotika goroda kul'tury. Peterburg, ed. M. L. Gas 30-77. (Tartu, 1984), parovetal. 26. Toporov, tekst, 6, 29. Peterburgskii Bronze Horseman 27. Andrew 96-97. Kahn, PushkinsThe (London, 1998), and original 28. For a compelling discussion of the side" of the Peters "negative stolits v istoricheskom in K. G. text, see K. G. Isupov, dvizhenii," burg "Dialog Isupov, et contra: v istorii kul'tur samosoznaniia ed., Moskva-Peterburg, pro Dialog natsionaVnogo 6-81. (St. Petersburg, 2000), 29. Aleksandr 30. Ibid., Benois, 4. "Zhivopisnyi Peterburg," Mir iskusstva, no. 1 (1902): 2-4.
of Nikolai
po
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transgressively attractive. Modernity vivacity brings this city unnatural its true nature.31 and endangers was as The turmoil of post-October by many Petersburg experienced a realization of the paradoxical of urban intensified beauty by metaphor to in response strategies emerged peril.32 A rich array of representational as Lisa A. of this reactivation of the eschatological Petersburg; mythology inhabited an already Kirschenbaum puts it, "the ghosts of the blockade of haunted The aesthetic the first siege of the landscape."33 experience urgency during the second. For the present study it is especially impor uses the first as a tant that the second in addressing the siege template a discursive is discourse The result text.34 Petersburg bridging: regarding text that proved most that aspect of the Petersburg the end of Petersburg, in the twentieth century, skips from the first to the second productive mass purges of the intelli almost siege, ignoring the 1930s, when, after a to the industrial outskirts, the city became shift and gentsia population
and
city (by the armyofGeneral Nikolai Iudenich in 1919-20) acquires a new
effectively "provincialized."35 This aesthetic bridging was possible thanks not least to certain cultural between the epochs; one of the "connective tissue" who provided figures was most the hardiest and active of these Ol'ga Ostroumova-Lebedeva not only to she managed the of winter 1941-42, (1871-1955). During
31. present The beautiful, by the aggressive, unscrupulous dying city of the past endangered "The in of is a crucial the the Hirsh, concept problem symbolist city. See Sharon 322-25.
andModern Urban Society (Cambridge, Eng., 2004), Ideal City, the Dead City," Symbolism
and 57-88; ris, eds., Preserving Petersburg: History, Memory, Nostalgia 2008), (Bloomington, in Modernist "Piranesi in Petrograd: and Dilemmas Polina Barskova, Sources, Strategies, Slavic Review 65, no. 4 (Winter 2006): of the Ruins 694-712. (1918-1921)," Depictions 33. Kirschenbaum, 15. Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, to the of the "recy have paid attention Scholars increasing intriguing problem "The G. Rambow, of the experience of the first siege by the second; see, e.g., Aileen in Robert W. Thurston Literature and of Wartime Ideological Change," Leningrad: Siege toWorld War II in the Soviet Union and Bernd eds., The Peoples War: Responses Bonwetsch, 34. cling"
of the For analyses of "death of Petersburg" discourse, spectrum representational see E. Yudina, to Necropolis: Exten The St. Petersburg Myth and Its Cultural "Metropolis of Southern sion in the 1910s and 1920s" California, 1999); Grigorii (PhD diss., University Helena Gos 177-79; 2004), (St. Petersburg, Sankt-Peterburg: Obrazy prostranstva Kaganov, M. Nor in Helena Goscilo and Stephen Visions and Visuals," cilo, "Unsaintly Petersburg?
257-77, 32.
(Urbana, 2000), 154-70; Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Leningrad, 27-29. Siege of

35. Viktor
tersburg outskirts bez ment:
move the opposite the siege, he registers 1927, no. 6: 18. During sluzhby," Novyi LEF, "The city was taken in such a tight circle that it lost its outskirts." Viktor Shklovskii, who always had an eye for 40. Shklovskii, Tetiva: O neskhodstve skhodnogo (Moscow, 1970), and re notes that while the 1930s saw the city's historical memory suppressed paradox, center new Soviet content, to historical the the with siege again brought light city's placed as well as its discursive is discussed Simmons, centrality. This aptly by Cynthia problem in Goscilo and Norris, Culture under eds., Preserving Pe (1941-1944)," "Leningrad Siege For a comprehensive and study of the fading of artistic di tersburg, 164-82. illuminating versity in 1930s
one of the observers of Pe and most Shklovskii, sharpest compassionate to the notes in crawls in the twentieth the 1920s: century, "Petersburg spatiality a "60 dnei but dead center." with a beautiful and becomes Shklovskii, bagel-city
2008), 275-89.
Leningrad,
consult
M.
S. Kagan,
Istoriia
kul'tury Peterburga
(St. Petersburg,
Cultural Repurposing Memory inLeningrad, 1941-1944 337

of her peers, including Pavel Shillingovskii, Ivan Bilibin, survive?many a and Nikolai Tyrsa, did not?but also to become of the Mir champion in Leningrad. Boris Zagurskii, director of the Lenin iskusstva movement of Music during the siege, writes: "I spent some time grad Conservatory comes with Ostroumova-Lebedeva. She read us her diaries. The epoch are remarkable. alive [ozhivaet] in them. The personal In gen portraits should be published."36 The eral, these notes are very interesting?they "to come alive" is used very rarely by Leningrad diarists in the expression to a cul winter of 1941-42, and it is even more revealing to see it applied tural epoch de seemingly buried alive by the Soviet cultural authorities cades before. City ideologists found Ostroumova-Lebedeva's memories, as well as her skills, was on the quite useful in 1941-42, when Leningrad to women In extinction. of from the salutations of Scot verge response a to the land, she was engaged by Smornyi party headquarters compile art book about As decorative artist the herself writes, besieged Leningrad. not without me In surprise: "They remembered [vspomnili obo mne]"37 for the oldest surviving representative deed, this was a fortunate occasion of Mir iskusstva in the city. Ostroumova-Lebedeva's work for this project secured her worker's ration and saved her life. The art book itself was a conceptually peculiar piece. Ostroumova-Lebedeva explains: Members of our government decided to reciprocate the art book made by the Scottish women with one of our own.... Twenty ofmy lithographs were chosen for this purpose, as well as some photographs. The frontis the of Lenin. featured The book came out very [Vladimir] piece figure beautiful. Cloth bound with old-fashioned embroidery, the book was put in a box lined with silver and gold brocade. It took four days to produce the book, but we worked from 7:30 a.m. until midnight.38 intended Many features of this art book seem to be mutually exclusive: to allude to and protest the of horrific art this war, against actuality object first and foremost beautifies and its (through its precious gold brocade, devices of the past) the disaster-stricken representational city enveloping it. its visual narrative opens with the figure of Lenin, While thus affirming the political underpinnings of the eponymous vast the city, majority of the to inside have do with Soviet Ostroumova etchings nothing Leningrad. recreates here her visions from the Mir iskusstva as well Lebedeva period as her illustrations for the art book executed (1922) Petersburg together with Mstislav Dobuzhinskii and for Nikolai Antsiferov's Dusha Peterburga Ostroumova-Lebedeva the city's present situation (1922). challenges no bombed see no in the dead citizens through negation?we buildings, The artist offers the same inter streets, no hint of military propaganda.
Boris Zagurskii, Iskusstvo surovykh let was 85. The 1970), (Leningrad, manuscript but only in 1974 and in such form as demonstrated the editors' published, censoring zeal. See Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, 1974). The origi Avtobiograficheskie zapiski (Moscow, nal manuscript is held at the Rossiiskaia natsional'naia Otdel f. 1015. biblioteka, rukopisei, 37. Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, in Suris, ed., Bol'she, chem vospominan'ia, "Dnevnik," 43. indeed 38. Ibid., 44. 36.
338
Slavic Review
cen pretation of Petersburg imperiled that she had formulated when the awe we in face the of lifeless vast, deserted, tury opened: squares serenity snow. Ostroumova-Lebedeva insists on nondiscrimination piled high with of historical
relativity and flexibility vis-a-vis the notion of time in besieged Leningrad. The experience of siege time was highly individualized, with aberrations self-defense. Inber astutely remarks symbolic of psychological generally upon this phenomenon: Our street clocks have symbolic meaning. When the shelling and bomb ing started, they were among the first things to suffer. Clocks showed different times in different parts of town. . . .This was the hour of their downfall. Some completely collapsed; others teetered likeweathervanes; still others looked unharmed, but were dead. Time had run out, been
exhausted. I'll never
as outlined preter: for her, Petersburg, filled with aesthetic contradictions not cease in Benois's to exist with the advent of Soviet Len article, did to assert its she the new cultural ways ingrad; sought continuity within was a for such manipulations epoch.41 One of the preconditions poignant
is always empty epochs: her Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad and pristine.39 This conception coincides with Toporov's idea that the "Pe itself diachronically rather than synchronic tersburg text conceptualizes a of for certain category ally."40 Indeed, Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad culture the city's defining connection is to its past rather interpreters, was one such inter than to its present or future. Ostroumova-Lebedeva
siren wailed, I glanced up at one of the street clocks and, instead of its with bright, hostile stars.42 dial, I saw a black circle of night sky Inber portrays siege time as dysfunctional, frozen, dead, and yet not ho can be in various ways, for example, This time manipulated mogenous.43 an aestheticized with urban space by framing space within an replaced or a onto different historical moment. Understand empty clock, projected most into the future, into the "beautiful citizens themselves ably, projected as their survival strat while others used postwar period," imaginary "pasts" connects various es Ostroumova-Lebedeva and creative egy template.44
see M. F. of Ostroumova-Lebedeva's 39. For a comprehensive oeuvre, summary i akvarel' P. Graviura Ostroumovoi-Lebedevoi: Kiselev, 1984). (Moscow, GrafikaA. 40. Toporov, tekst, 26, 35. Peterburgskii cre as of the preservationist of Ostroumova-Lebedeva 41. For discussion participant see Katerina of Petersburg, ation of the "static urbanscape" Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of 61. Cultural Revolution Mass., 1995), (Cambridge, Vish space." Vsevolod On the nearest post chimneys. we saw a if time had frozen! We wanted poster: . . . were to the post. Houses to take the poster, but it had frozen broken. empty, windows was dead." that the landscape Vsevolod I constantly had gone numb, felt that everything 90. Dnevniki Vishnevskii, 2002), voennykh let (Moscow, Leningrad: 43. Diarists nevsky observes: the siege's frozen, quiet 'Great Festivities?22 "The "frozen time" with Neva. Quiet factory ... As 1941' June no. muzeia istorii Sankt-Peterburga, N. V. Lazareva, "Blokada," Trudy gosudarstvennogo a remarkable of the past Glebova's 236. Tat'iana (2000): diary provides example . . . was on almost air all the raid siren the of the present: "Yesterday soothing pain night. 44. 5
forget
how
once,
on
grim,
freezing
evening,
as
42. Vera Inber,Pochti trigoda:Leningradskiidnevnik (Moscow, 1968), 279.

connect its "frozen
Cultural Memory inLeningrad, 1941-1944 339 Repurposing

of the Petersburg text, aiming first and foremost chatological expressions to preserve the urban past: while marking crises, she implies continuity of this text, hence and a seamlessness subverting its Soviet component. of Ostroumova of the emergence the timeliness upon Commenting notes in the im contradictions Lebedeva's memoirs, peculiar Zagurskii was to that all this written herself: "It's hard of the artist and, age imagine woman us in an old most sitting before by the old important, experienced, face that features, however, woman's dress, with an old woman's wrinkled
sadness."45 For Zagur clever, insightful eyes with a hidden remarkably to the old this skii, past, but her eyes are lady obviously belongs fragile a of the renders her crucial agent present. Ostroumova sharp, and vision as a of the idea of overwriting and stands Lebedeva living embodiment to the In in the value of her presence time. addition symbolic transcending terms in Ostroumova-Lebedeva city, practical by tirelessly bridged epochs
and her aesthetic propaganda the Mir iskusstva movement; popularizing new of Leningrad artists.46 successful, generations proved influencing one young artist, S. Smirnov-Kordobskii, wrote in a let For example, ter following his visit to the besieged city: "It's hard to convey the feeling so bound up with all that is remark streets the of this you get walking city able in our art and painting. The city streets are empty, but to me, the I feel the breathing is not dead: and language of the city, at landscape at others like that of Do times like the voice of Ostroumova-Lebedeva, to this account, the city in buzhinskii, Iaremich, or Grinberg."47 According as alive due to the could be tradition experienced representational peril
I lull myself with cozy stories about how someone and I are somewhere out in the boondocks people) traveling by relay we have dinner at an inn in front of a in the time of Pushkin; carriage, roaring to examine in the company of that era, and it's terribly interesting of people close." Tat'iana "Risovat' kak letopisets: Glebova, dnevnika," Stranitsy blokadnogo In order are, modern to fall asleep, (the way in a post fireplace them up Iskusstvo
we
Leningrada,
of rhetorical via the "consolation 1990, no. 1: 30. Another interesting example O sebe i o svoem dele the siege is the book of memoirs Konashevich, past" during by Vladimir two in which the author interweaves narratives?his (Moscow, 1968), contrasting "idyllic" childhood and the siege winter. prerevolutionary 45. 46. Iskusstvo surovykh let, 86. Zagurskii, art historian The Petr Kornilov recalls share with visitors how Ostroumova-Lebedeva of Mir iskusstva as a most would, in the
winters
copies precious gift. P. E. in Papernaia, 119. Ostroumova-Lebedeva's Kornilov, ed., Podvigveka, "My byli vmeste," an open creative work during the siege made and eulogistic discussion of Mir possible iskusstva in the press of the time; see P. Kornilov, "Po masterskim khu leningradskikh no. 7 (1943): dozhnikov: Anna 8-9. Kornilov writes: Ostroumova-Lebedeva," Leningrad, "What people surrounded Ostroumova! In the same article, iskusstva group." career, she Kornilov mentions same oil, still uses the and She dedicated is especially
of 1941-44,
Lebedeva's
city became N. Pavlov. 47. here
drying that unity of content
is inalienable
emblematic
set of gravers she has thus emphasizing always used," from formal unity. Ostroumova-Lebedeva's view of the influenced such siege artists as V. Morozov and decisively "Pis'ma," in Suris, ed., Bol'she, chem vospominan'ia, 340.
to have to the Mir proud belonged to the fiftieth of Ostroumova anniversary that though during the siege the artist "ran out of
The artistsStepan Iaremich (1869-1939)

strongly influenced the tradition
S. Smirnov-Kordobskii,
of the Petersburg
and Vladimir Grinberg (1897-1942) mentioned

urbanscape.
340
Slavic Review
of the cityscape as practiced by the "Petersburg art school." The emptiness of the city?so much of its population re dead or evacuated?was dually on the one hand, this fulfilled interpreted: emptiness eerily eschatological on the other, it was in prophecy; keeping with the genre of the architectural sketch, which requires people only as staffage figures. As Viktor Shklovskii notes in the aptly siege section of his book Tetiva: O neskhodstve skhodnogo: "The city is alive and dead."48 Shklovskii appreciated the tragic paradox of new the dead of the to birth creative siege representation: body city gives of urban knowledge and self-identification. The cityscape of paradigms the suffering city, insofar as it could be experienced and described in the was of the alive. tradition, representational language previous curator Russian Museum P. E. Kornilov, who visited frequently Ostroumova-Lebedeva the recalls that "she did not want to during siege, but rather to show the city as itwas before the war."49 depict destruction, not More precisely, just before this particular war, but before all the cata clysms of the twentieth century. An analogous past "bridging," addressing crises to meet the aesthetic needs of the present, takes in represen place
mova-Lebedeva and Shillingovskii shared common artistic views and had a warm worst of the the siege, she would collegial relationship; during days con send him lithographic materials.51 But while Ostroumova-Lebedeva's an ever-doomed, is that of and wholesome yet tinuity eerily "picture per fect" city, Shillingovskii's (see figure 3) ,52 continuity is that of destruction his 1923 series Ruins and Resurrection of Petersburg. Between 1923 various Soviet locales?the 1941, Shillingovskii Crimea, depicted and Moscow?but is a Tatarstan, Moldavia, rarely his native city. There certain oddity in this: once a star pupil of the Petersburg Academy of Art, tradition dictated where constantly using this ultimate art-engendering as a model, was interested in depicting city Shillingovskii only the criti cal stages of his city's existence. For him, ruin and crisis were the most state for the city of Petersburg. historically?and rhetorically?suitable and
48. 49. 50. 51. 52. Shklovskii, Tetiva, 42. career, see E. V. Grishina, P. A. 117. Kornilov, "My byli vmeste," For a chronological of Shillingovskii's summary Kornilov,
tationsof thebesieged cityby Pavel Shillingovskii (1881-1942).50 Ostrou
since
In 1942, Shillingovskiiaddressed the city inhis work for thefirsttime
121. "My byli vmeste," in her artworks Ostroumova-Lebedeva asserted timeless Curiously, though to in her diary of that time she allowed herself in the peacefulness, indulge imagery of "I would destruction: this picture thus: clouds of stinking black smoke apocalyptic paint have obscured the whole earth and sky. And of fire, with sparks and steam, break tongues through "Diary and dance about. of Anna Petrovna below And people Ostroumova-Lebedeva, swarm about." artist," O. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, in Simmons and Perlina, eds.,
Shillingovskii(Leningrad, 1980).
of the eschatological of the meaning of Pe Shillingovskii's interpretation continuity in his diary: the siege was not unique. Lebedev writes "Now as never before tersburg during curse: a to Me I can hear Jeremiah's 'For this city has been of My anger and provocation even to this Lebedev, dnevnik," My fury from the day that they built it, day!'" "Blokadnyi
Writing the Siege of Leningrad, 31.
10April 1942.
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
341
Figure 3. P. Shillingovskii, Osazhdennyi gorod (The Besieged City, 1942). From I. A. Brodskii et al., eds., Khudozhniki goroda-fronta (Leningrad, 1973), 83. Both Ostroumova-Lebedeva and Shillingovskii create a unified text of the that to an almost com subverts "real" suffering Petersburg history (due of in lack interest the plete "Leningrad" period) by imposing connections the critical stages of urban life. between
of ruin is polysemantic: its direct task is to Shillingovskii's depiction bear mournful witness to destruction, but the artist also always insists on his own cocreation of history by means of creative interpretation, invari a war in his next untouched ably including images building by placed to a ruined one, as if to affirm for the This reconstruction.53 hope city's immanent feature allows for the complex of Shillin ideological message ruins both remind the viewer of the govskii's cityscapes: his Piranesi-like to the a erect connection and city's past bridges to hopeful future.54 They also convey antiwar sentiment and even an uneasy fascination with the spectacle of danger. the end of the end-of-Petersburg and Shillingovskii's urbanscapes discourse, both Ostroumova like eschatological operate destruction and hence ne
Within Lebedeva's
fiction. Ostroumova-Lebedeva's city negates linked with gates historical change; city is inextricably Shillingovskii's destruction?two of the seam seemingly polar-opposite interpretations text that follow two "vectors" of the Bronze lessness of the Petersburg and tragic negation of the myth and Horseman, whereby odic acceptance a of nature. meaning Petersburg acquire symbiotic
53. 54. for the Kaganov, Piranesi Sankt-Peterburg, and his fictions 194-95. of urban and historical a decay held strong fascination for instance, See, Betsy F. Moeller of the Petersburg in Mstislav Myth 4 (October 539-67. 1998):
associated with Mir iskusstva. lithographers and the Transformation Dore, Sally, "No Exit: Piranesi, Urban Dreams,'" Russian Dobuzhinskii's Review 57, no.
342
Slavic Review
Recasting
the Bronze
Horseman
noticed in besieged Given the scarcity of resources, celebra Leningrad. were to highlight tions limited in scale, but every effort was made the fact that the city's life and history had not been extinguished. Several com memorative focused on the strategies for including the city's publications past in the difficult narrative of its present. to the fes One issue of the journal Leningradw&s dedicated complete Such prominent and officially "approved" chroniclers of the as Vsevolod Nikolai Du and Mikhail Vishnevskii, Tikhonov, city besieged din submitted articles glorifying the "fortress-city."55 As during Grigorii era of fifteen years earlier, rhetoric fo Zinov'ev's "Petrogradocentrism" cused on the unique qualities of the city and its history:56 Boris Likharev's the city as "the firstling of the people's poem eulogizes "Leningrad" glory from Peter's days to our time," "symbol of victory" and "happiness of Rus sia."57 Interwoven with such exalted reiteration of the city's present signifi cance were affirmations of its past Vishnevskii writes: glory. Vsevolod was called It is called Leningrad. When its firstbuildings were erected, it was Later it renamed This has had many Petersburg. Petrograd. city
names, and it has been witness
The 240th anniversary (May 1943) of the city'sfounding did not pass un
tive date.
dinary events; they were crucial for the fate of the Russian state. This was and is an extraordinary city. . . .Two hundred fortyyears ago, Peter chose this place for his city: "The citywill be founded here!" On an is land amidst the broad Neva, bastions arose. The echo of a cannonade declared to all Russia that a new page of itshistory had been turned; in 1917, from these same bastions, a new cannonade declared to the world that a new page inworld history had been turned.58 on heroic a an in origins, tragic present framing, emphasis into the epic past: it is difficult not to notice the correlation narrative and Pushkin's The between 240th anniversary Leningrad's creators of of choice for the Bronze Horseman?the obvious siege template Eulogistic terwoven mythology. The monument
55. 56. Leningrad,
to many
events.
And
these
were
no
or
and
its seminal
poetic
reflection
emerge
in this is
no. 7 (1943). declared: the period of the so-called Zinov'ev party opposition, Petrograd it is a more its unique features: city than Moscow; quite possibly, proletarian "Petrograd effort with which for the city's present crisis lies in that enormous the reason Petrograd . . We . to treat think itwrong from a would Petrograd always throw itself first into battle. does not view. All of Soviet Russia needs Russia of Petrograd. egalitarian point simplistic, as it is, as the to be needs need town; Russia Petrograd Petrograd just another provincial see two prospects center We for the future of in the whole Republic. largest proletarian could be treated as leaves the city alone. The first is that the Republic Petrograd Petrograd. a to a slow death. The is that second prospect doom the relic. This would city revolutionary its the reconstruction of Petrograd the grave situation, should deem the Republic, despite most in G. Tsyperovich, Budushchee Petrograda important "Vstuplenie," goal." G. Zinov'ev, During has 2-3. 1922), (Petrograd, 57. Boris Likharev, 58. Vsevolod "Leningrad," Vishnevskii, "Ego no. Leningrad, zovut Leningrad," 7 (1943): Leningrad, 4. no. 7 (1943): 4.
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
343
Figure 4. A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Mednyi vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman, 1942). From N. Sinitsyn, Graviury Ostroumovoi-Lebedevoi (Moscow, 1964), 126. sue of in all possible reincarnations: Dudin offers a modernized Leningrad an version of Pushkin's in Vishnevskii the text; editorial, poetic explicates of the Kamenskii describes the monument; significance ideological history of its creation; Ostroumova-Lebedeva of supplies lithographic depictions it (see figure 4).59 In these texts, the monument, itsmyth, and its literary reflection appear as symbolic systems that are both suited to completely the moment and completely flexible. Following the literary reincarnations Peter again "awakens" "organized" by Pushkin and Andrei Belyi, Falconet's the in as a copper mold Dudin's "You didn't arise poem: during siege merely are serves a indeed alive!" Dudin's Peter rather straight by Falconet?you forward purpose?to remind Russian soldiers of the victorious traditions towhich are heir ("comrade, we are the Peter of the Great") they offspring and of "his" city they are called to defend. In this poem, Peter's time and the siege coexist in a kind of montage-like of disparate superimposition This is device in this of issue the epochs. pervasive journal?for example, Vishnevskii's refrain repeats: "As itwas then, so it remains now."60
59. Ostroumova-Lebedeva the Bronze Horseman without Characteristically, depicts the defensive built for it in the autumn of 1941, despite observed the scaffolding having construction thereof that August. From an earlier her of sketch description reworking we can see that this affirmation of as "I worked continuity gives her strength: ecstatically, if intoxicated. is diminished, isn't working and my hand My strength my heart properly, shakes. But as soon as I took up my instrument, I felt my old confidence right away; the first me down." Ostroumova-Lebedeva, print calmed Avtobiograficheskie zapiski (St. Petersburg,
2003), 3:296. (1943): 5, 4.
60. Mikhail
Dudin,
"Petr,"
and Vishnevskij
"Ego
zovut
Leningrad,"
Leningrad,
no.
344
Slavic Review
Vladimir Druzhinin's novella "The Bronze Horseman" is marked by the same montage in order to maximize device: a performer, the impact of Pushkin's poem upon Leningraders under siege, changes the order of the text's parts: Kirsanov recited the first lines of the poem. Preparing for this concert, he had rearranged the poem, so that the introduction had become the He began: Over gloomyPetrograd,November breathed itsautumnal ending.... cold. . . .The listeners immediately responded to the actor with agitated attention, as ifPushkin's poem was not about a forgotten and indiffer . . .The ent past, but the present feelings and experience of Leningrad. to of sounded like the The them poem poem spoke genius.... prophecy of a pitched battle for the city, the savage cruelty of enemies, themighty
cold of unheated
introduction. Now the poem was narrating the glory of the city, its firm ness in battle: Be glorious, Peters city,and stand,firm as Russia itself! That's how Kirsanov finished his reading. In the words of the great poet, Kir sanov had avowed that the suffering of the citizens of Leningrad was not
in vain.61
apartments.
. . .And
then
Kirsanov
moved
on
to
the
is twofold: it is In Druzhinin's text, the function of The Bronze Horseman at the same time, to serve as a mimetic description of the siege; supposed an in a re-montaged, "reverse" order, Pushkin's uplifting tragedy becomes was not in the that citizens their "suffering propaganda piece, reassuring were many. On text the uses of Pushkin's vain." Indeed, during the siege role could be seen of Peter's historical the one hand, this interpretation as consistent with Iosif Stalin's prewar matter: Peter, the readings of the no to of Russia. the enemies showed wise and charismatic leader, mercy states the that "Pushkin described scholar Boris Reizov tragic fate Literary of our transformer of the of individuals, elemental the chaos, great image state of the and the idea the all and above this, country, lofty inspi grand to the anniversary issues ration of patriotism."62 Many of the contributors state the of Leningrad seemed to agree that the idea by grand of promulgated individual tragedies into the background, Peter and his successors pushed overshadowed jibes with by affairs of the city-power. This interpretation the Stalinist creation of the usable past: the 1930s saw the reinvention correct ruler, the merciless but wise of Peter the Great as a politically creator of a better future for hitherto uneasy Russian statehood.63 Peter's In is thus one aspect of Stalinist mythmaking.64 siege-time reincarnation the this context, the siege reaffirmed Peter's ritual value: symptomatically,
no. 17-18 16. "The Bronze Horseman," (1943): Druzhinin, Leningrad, v no. 16 (1943): 10-11. "Literatura Leningrad, Leningrade," in Stalin's discussion of the role of Petrine mythology 63. For a perceptive ideologi see Kevin M. F. Piatt, Tolstoi's Aleksei and Afterimage: "Rehabilitation cal project, Many in Kevin M. F. Piatt and David to Peter the Great," Returns eds., Epic Revi Brandenberger, 47- 69. This and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda sionism: Russian History 2006), (Madison, 61. Vladimir Boris 62. Reizov,
fine article sheds importantadditional lighton the subject of the classic studybyNicholas Peter the Great inRussian History and Thought (NewYork, 1985). Riasanovsky, The Image of
64. On '"Healing of Leningrad for propaganda the Soviet mythologizing War the Wounds': Commemorations, Myths, 1941-1950" (PhD diss., University Imperial Heritage, of Toronto,
Maddox, Leningrad's
see Steven purposes, of and the Restoration 2009).
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
345
a site where in 1942, became tsar's grave, renovated soldiers took their to oath prior to being deployed for their fight city.65 is the fact that this was not the Crucial for the present study, however, at the time. While the "red count" Alek only usage of Petrine mythology sei Tolstoi was finishing his trilogy about the tsar, casting him as a glori ous forerunner of Stalin's ex-wife, the poet politics and policies, Tolstoi's an to who Natal'ia declined leave the city of Krandievskaia, opportunity her cultural heritage, wrote: 3#ecb riyiiiKHHa h OajibKOHeTa B^BOHHe 6ecciviepTeH chjtv3t.
O, naivmTb! BOôeM Tboh BepHbiM Ha rug tu BepHa. KOJibimeT
H MpaMOp
Is twice
3HaMeR~a,
JiHiia, HMeHa,
)KHB,H 6pOH3a ?bIUIHT.
(Here the silhouette of Pushkin and Falconet

immortal. names
O memory! You keep faith with the faithful. Undulate at the bottom of your reservoir? And themarble lives, and the bronze breathes.)66 For Krandievskaia, itwas not Peter himself, but the Bronze Horseman? not the tsar, but the artistic text he ensured the city's im inspired?that Two two Petrine and of the mortality. mythologies conceptions continuity of Petersburg's cultural memory thus coexisted within a single historical situation: one, public and state-oriented, the other private and artistic.67 This competition of coexisting pasts within a cultural system is ame nable toMichel Foucault's concept of a heterotopia capable of "juxtaposing in a single real several in and of spaces, several sites" incompatible place are in this these the but case, themselves; seemingly related, aesthetically sites of cultural memory's antonymous, interpretation.68 In 1943, a series of postcards was published to commemorate the city's anniversary: tor Morozov
Banners, faces,
Nikolai Pavlov, and Vik images by Ostroumova-Lebedeva, show celebrated architectural sites.69 Most of these urban because of scapes strike us as peculiar they provide no hint whatsoever the siege. Instead, we see cathedrals, monuments, and canals as timeless.
65. 66. 67. the siege L. Ronchevskaia, "Dnevnik bez Natal'ia Krandievskaia, Grozovyi For the public and state-oriented, version of the Sovietization 165. slov," in Papernaia, ed., Podvigveka, venok (Moscow, 93. 1985), see Konstantin Fedin's succinct formulations "imperial heritage": eternal [This city....
of
its unity of past and present, preserved since the time of Peter with a consistent tradition in art, literature, and science, remarkably . . .There ismuch in our character to understand that would be impossible with industry. out reference to how that character in the ismanifest and Leningrad cultural Petersburg historical s framework." Svidanie Fedin, 15, 53. Leningradom, 68. Michel Foucault, "Des espaces autres" (1967), documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html 69. Ostroumova-Lebedeva's productive gan with her collaboration for details, tieth century; with in at foucault.info/ English 1March (last accessed 2010). with the genre of postcard be
of Leningrad's the old and
has "Leningrad is] a city endowed
relationship at the very the St. Eugenia Society beginning see Goscilo, St. Petersburg?" 72-73. "Unsaintly
of the twen
346
Slavic Review
another Leningrad (This strategy was not unique: anniversary publication a of 1943 omitted wartime the destruction images, declaring "separate on and too complicated topic requiring special attention."70) All the sites are shown in their prewar condition. On the postcards the reverse side we see the to include this collection the expect city emblem. We would insistent symbols of Soviet Leningrad such as the statue of Lenin on his car at the Finland rust-free armored In Station, or the one at Smornyi. with these select 1943, however, together signifiers, postcards portrayed such symbols of the city as the Bronze Horseman, St. Isaak's Cathedral, the so on. the Rostral and columns, Exchange building, were All these structures, the city's prerevolutionary sup genii loci, to that the of architecture is invincible signify beauty posed Petersburg to and exists outside history, as if the destruction of war is not "allowed" on meant to leave any trace thereon. Depicted inform the Big postcards Land, the rest of the country, of Leningrad's resistance, the Bronze Horse man became at once the emblem of the 240th anniversary?symbolizing the city's military might, its "eternal" beauty, and its seamless history. Frames: and
Siege
Emptiness
Imagination
of many artists saw the city during the siege as an "unreal" artifact because its divergence from the "normal" state of prewar Soviet Leningrad. This was informed and fre conception by various factors, the most obvious measures to turn discussed the taken energetic Leningrad quently being art: "Many of us understood into a showcase for propaganda that we were our art by turning the to saturate the citywith posters. We would publicize on the one into exhibit [gorod-vystavka]. Huge emerged city big panels walls of the buildings. This was all the city party committee's idea."71 But beyond the utilitarian necessity of repurposing the city as a propa were to made other interesting attempts ganda exhibit, interpret the city as a whole as a work of art.72 inclined observers endeavored Aesthetically to frame the city rhetorically, thus turning it into a tableau vivant, as Ol'ga termed it, or, to be perhaps more historically precise, a tab Freidenberg a dismal of citizens attempting leau mort. Freidenberg describes episode to obtain water: and elderly women drew "Women and children, men
70.
Inspired by images of the past and appalled by visions of the present,
et al., eds., in I. A. Brodskii "V osazhdennom gorode," was in Leningrad, however, 1973), 53. Not everyone (Leningrad, goroda-fronta art streets of the Konashevich the with of the the covering city. propaganda pleased quality streets are but a big smear. It looks like a brown-gray "These nothing patch complained: can say what's Konashevich, work; from afar nobody going on." Vladimir "Vospominaniia," f. 76, op. 2. GRM OR, manuscript, 71. V. Raevskaia-Rutkovskaia, Khudozhniki 72. Nikitin nated work and
(Leningrad, 1943), 4.
Leningrad:
Arkhitekturno-planirovochnyi
obzor, ed. N.
Baranov,
Kamensky,
et al.
if a great
put his rays into impressionist dnevnik," light." Nikitin, "Blokadnyi
was not wartime of his city (fasci only fascinated by the unique beauty to the as the reiteration of this viewpoint), but saw it allegorically point of frequent . . . It's as see it in of an artist: "We all are taken by this beauty?we didn't peacetime. this amazing 127. beauty to give it all the hues of color
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
347
a water with them emerged slippery field of muddy dirty dishes. Around wet ice. This was a motley tableau vivant, reminiscent of life in Asia some time around the seventeenth century."73 scholar and official, recalls the view of Vladislav Glinka, a Hermitage of a dying colleague's the deserted the city in November window through an illustration for some book on "Like embankment: the Neva apartment on the window the Neva slowly rolled along."74 The beyond Petrograd, from a past life, before 1924, when the city lost window frames a moment
its name.
In Freidenberg's the observer's gaze functions and Glinka's accounts, removes the urban as a frame that rhetorically spectacle from the winter a remote to is time and place. This of 1941. The entire city evacuated serves as a for both the site and for the kind of gaze protective buffer, that "function of the the frame [these the observation viewer, recalling is "to isolate and protect the image against material borders]" generally: from the surrounding with Burke's encroachment space."75 In accordance as an idea to the sublime of understanding pertaining self-preservation, an aestheticized to preserve both observers of the siege needed spectacle the frame. Expanding city and citizen from the horrific reality outside we the the Burke's elaboration, say upon might siege sublime preserves an of the site historical horror in of the aesthetic gaze by enclosing agent "containment zone" One of the most teleev, recalls: of spectacle. intent observers of the siege, the writer Leonid Pan
Iwas on roof duty for the firsttime and saw the city from seven floors up. I saw it as ifanew, as if seeing all its beauty and uniqueness for the first time?the its its canals "familiar with all Fontanka, Neva, buildings, city to the point of tears, to the point of swollen glands." Itwas all like some ancient relief engraving, with a cartouche in the upper corner. I couldn't takemy eyes off this sight.And I had the sudden thought: "Look! Memo rize! Drink it all in! You won't see the likes of this again."76 attests to the complex This account temporality of the siege as spec tacle. The estrangement historical disaster allows the observer imposed by to appreciate his city "as if anew" (kak by zanovo)?a particularly telling "as if," for what has now become visible is prerevolutionary poignantly the city of some "ancient engraving" since hidden under Petersburg, lay ers of Soviet existence.77 For Panteleev, his siege viewpoint reveals a more authentic that Leningrad has become city: "Yesterday I wrote someone
"Osadacheloveka,"ed.K.Nevel'skii,Minuvshee,no.3 O.M.Freidenberg, 74. V. Glinka, "Blokada: vospominanii, Fragmenty napisannykh Zvezda, 2005, no. 7:3-6. 75. 76. Gale Leonid L. MacLachan Panteleev, 73. 25. (1977): 1979 goda," 22.
letom
77. My understanding of a Circle the siege is informed "To Create and to Break It ('Siege Man's' by Kirill Kobrin, in Andrei Zorin World of Rituals)," and Emily Van Buskirk, eds., Lydia Ginzburg's Literary and Emily Van Buskirk "'Samotostrane [Emili Van Baskirk], Identity (Bern, forthcoming); v proze L. Ia. nie' kak eticheskii i esteticheskii Novoe literaturnoe obozre printsip Ginzburg,"
and Ian Reid, Framing and Interpretation (Melbourne, 1994), dver' (Leningrad, 356-57. 1980), Priotkrytaia as one of the central aesthetic mechanisms of estrangement
348
Slavic Review
than before there is less civiliza Petersburgian (probably because on the streets. The moon tion: there are few streetcars . . .and few people has replaced electric streetlights."78 of revived archaism Panteleev's coincides with one of the perception central texts of the siege sublime, the "Leningrad Apocalypse" chapter of the epic narrative poem Russian Gods (1949-53), in the Vladi composed mir prison by the poet Daniil Andreev, who served at the Leningrad front in 1942-43.
Bee H3JiyHeHbH 3êcb nejioBenecKHx Shbiuhxca CIUiaB Koma-to. tfJIfl BeHHOCTH
more
Cepaeri, CjIHJIHCb
b e^hhbih
C hêen 3o,zjHero: c 4>Pohtohom, C pe3b6ofi nyryHHOHno 6ajiKOHaM,

C BejiHHHeM
H bot Tenepb, noKpbiTbi CTpynbflMH

HeHcrrejiHMoro Ohh Hx Ha HaM pacnaâ, He TpynaMH? jihk pa3pymeH?
KapnaTH^.
Ka3ajiHCb?HeT, njiOTb HaC pa36HTa,
Pa3BonjiomaeMbie
B3HpaJTH
jxyuin
c BblUIHHbl. 3HaHbeM
KaK 6y#TO ropbKOH, ropbKOH My^pocTbio,

HenoHHTHbiM, 3th hx CTpauiHbiM 3âHbH BofiHa, 06oraTHjra Pa3pyriiHBuiaa
(All the emanations

Hearts that have
of the human
beaten here
ever
Have merged into a single alloy for eternity With the idea of the architect: with the gable, With the cast-iron fretwork of balconies, With the grandeur of caryatids. And now, covered in the scabs Of incurable disintegration Their flesh is shattered, their countenance
Souls excarnate They seemed?no, not corpses?
destroyed?
on high. Gazing upon us from As if the war that had destroyed them Had endowed these buildings With a bitter, bitter wisdom, A terrifyingknowledge we could not understand.)79
nie, no. 81
1March 2010).
78. 79. Leonid Daniil
(2006):
261-81, Panteleev,
atmagazines.russ.ru/nlo/2006/81/ba24.html "V osazhdennom gorode," ipoemy Sobranie (Moscow, sochinenii 1989),
(last accessed (Leningrad, 158-59.
1972), 3:368.
Andreev,
Russkie
bogi: Stikhotvoreniia
Repurposing Andreev
Cultural Memory thus envisions
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
349
of the siege. These professionals spent the siege during the first months a at not could but that influence their imagi frames, empty looking reality one of the main chroniclers nations. The artist and writer Vera Miliutina, of the siege-era Hermitage, observed: The windows faced Palace Square. After so much rattling, there weren't any panes left in the window frames. The empty picture frames on the walls and the cords hanging from nails induced a cemetery-like atmo . . . the naked, ceremonial sphere. This was a dead kingdom beauty of which seemed especially regal, striking one with its stern splendor. Of ten I would walk past the bare panels in the Rembrandt Room. Twilight begins to envelop the hall. The Danae is gone; gone are the trembling hands of the old man leaning over his prodigal son.80
a the besieged of population city as melding common and cultural artifacts united and decorporealized by suffering. In his view, ruination brings new knowledge; thus the city returns to its true Petersburgian is inalienable from its perilous and pro self, which phetic past. The issues of point of view and framing are treated with unique liquid museum in the diaries and memoirs of Leningrad and breadth staff ity thousands of works of art (curators, art historians, artists) who evacuated
con of the Hermitage One of the most striking episodes siege saga cerns tours led empty guided by curators?emaciated women?showing as frames to visitors (usually sailors, who would try to bring technical even sistance and food to the Hermitage). "Anna Pavlovna Sultan Shakh never used to we tours before the war. But give guided during the siege, see her in the empty halls of the Hermitage, would excitedly and expres . . .about the soldiers and officers the sively telling priceless masterpieces museum used to have."81 were not Thus the Hermitage Rembrandts absent from completely were as re the museum the discursive Rather, present during siege. they constructions which the bearers of aesthetic the resisted memory through of the sign by replacing In another absence sense, image with narrative. could be said, contrary toMiliutina's mournful ob too, the Rembrandts servation rather they (see figure 5), not to have disappeared completely: were transferred from their usual place within gilded frames into the sub of siege survivors who spent the first winter in the Her jective experience cellars-turned-bomb shelters, where many of the staffmembers mitage were removed in March) lived and died of the ,82 One (forty-six bodies
in 80. Vera Miliutina, 66. For informa ed., Podvigveka, "Rany Ermitazha," Papernaia, an I used tion on Miliutina, researched of remarkable emotional admirably monograph i o nei (Moscow, Rozanov, ed., Vera Miliutina 1991). depth: Aleksandr 81. Vladimir "Velikii dukh byl vmesto Kalinin, ed., Podvig veka, kryl," in Papernaia, 48, 57. In the absence a new, 82. of actual objects of art, the frame acquired aesthetic higher status within the museum Shcherbacheva recalls: "The frames space. Art historian Mariia with particular the dark-purple of the walls. The glimmer brightness against background the ancient lilac windowpanes, rays of the setting sun pour through creating remarkably
350 M ; ^^^^^
Slavic Review
Figure 5. V. Miliutina, Razrusheniia v Ermitazhe (Destruction of the Hermitage, 1942). From I. A. Brodskii, et al., eds., Khudozhniki goroda-fronta (Leningrad, 1973), 292. describes the gloomy theater artist Mikhail Grigor'ev, inhabitants, a la Rem are lit, faces "Then and candles illuminating nights: tiny lamps while shadows from the brandt, swing huge ceiling."83 Thus while upstairs curators filled empty frames with words evoking in the improvised bomb Rembrandt's shelter, the imagery, downstairs, as as akin to of Rembrandt rendered theater, memory space something was present a stage set. Like in Rembrandt absentia, his phantom pain, an aesthetic filter art to to create need due the shadowy reexperienced cellar between the self and the siege night.84
subtle
hues
Shcherbacheva, 83. Mikhail 84. siege
spaces. Krandievskaia to tame horror lowing her ing small stove / The venok, 100. desire Czech
the most valuable collecting began in Papernaia, "Dni blokady," ed., Podvigveka, in Suris, ed., Bol'she, "Dnevniki," Grigor'ev, a becomes Rembrandt's ghostly presence repeated in the hall. We spent the first winter via aestheticization: "Rembrandt's dance
frames 36.
to save
them." Mariia
chem vospominan'ia, 75. in topotexts motif evoking in the company of rats?and of images al half-shade near the smolder furred backs." Krandievskaia, historical di
gopak
of the rats, their jerking impetus drew while to
Grozovyi The
for detachment artist Alfred
is a crucial Kan tor, who out of
camp, writes: ... came to instinct for By taking "My commitment drawing deep self-preservation. I could at least for a few moments the role of observer, detach myself from what was going The Book ofAlfred Kantor on." Alfred Kantor, (New York, 1971), n.p.
saster. The
art producing during at the Birkenau death
Repurposing "The Ruins
Cultural Memory Are Intact": The
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
351
ofUrban Things
Siege
Cityscape
as Theater
In his groundbreaking work, Grigorii Kaganov imaginatively characterizes in 1921": "Dobuzhinsky's series Dobuzhinskii's "Petersburg lithographic a sense not is in the the usual of that is, it is not a place word; city city in his prints, and often where people live. They are scarcely noticeable even wit entirely absent. This is the theater of urban things."85 Numerous nesses the of the "unusual" Leningrad interpret qualities cityscape during the winter of 1941- 42 (emptiness, destruction, huge amounts of snow and that opens this study, ice) in terms of theatricality. In the textual example Lazarev uses the words "stage set," and many share his formulation. Ruins are everywhere. They look striking under the snow, these ruins. At night in themoonlight they look like a somewhat convoluted, whimsical
theater stage set.
The
city looks like a palace from the Sleeping Beauty ballet. Streetcars are idle, cars are frozen in their tracks in the streets, and people are frozen in the positions they've curled up in.
Along both sides of the street stretch whimsical ruins as ifmade of lace_The bright light of themoon and sharp shadows give the entire en The unusual character of this spectacle [lies in its] its monumentality, peculiarly solemn calm and the beauty of its illumination.86 These
tourage the appearance of a gigantic stage set. Silence and emptiness....
its in
coincide with and are arguably rooted persistent formulations the theatrical layer of the city's mythology formulated by Lotman: Another feature of Petersburg space is its theatricality. The architecture of the city . . . gives the feeling of a stage set. . . .The theatricality of Petersburg is shown too in the clear demarcation between "stage" and
"behind the the "as
always there, but, for the participants

it were exists." . . .This constant
replacement
a constant scenes," of existence
awareness an "as
of
the
by
if existence." fluctuation
in the stage action,

between
and, spectator crucially, . . .The is spectator
the spectator
the reality
of
the spectator and the reality of [the] stage, when each of these realities was, from the point of view of the other, illusory,was what produced the Petersburg effect of theatricality. The feeling that there was a viewer, an observer who must not be noticed, accompanied all the ritual ceremo nies which filled the daily routine of the "military" capital.87 How does Lotman's characterization of Petersburg's theatricality relate to was the Who spectator Leningrad? besieged implied of and in the be
sieged city?
85. Grigorii
Mikhail
SidneyMonas (Stanford, 1997), 150. Emphasis added. 86. Miliutina, "Rany Ermitazha/' 65; Bianki, "Gorod, kotoryi pokinuli ptitsy," 172;
Gritsenko, 138. "Komandirovka "The v Leningrad," in Brodskii et al., eds., Khudozhniki Lotman, of St. Petersburg," Universe Mind: of A Semiotic The
Kaganov,
Images
of Space:
St. Petersburg
in the Visual
and
Verbal Arts,
trans.
goroda-fronta, 87. Yuri
oryofCulture (Bloomington, 1990), 197.
Symbolism
352
Slavic Review
Rus level, itwas enemy planes with their deadly surveillance. notes: curator Georgii all the time is Lebedev "Overhead The nastiest thing is that it can see us and we the drone of the Heinkel. can in some Edgar Alan Poe night it that is up there?like only guess same effect is noted actor Feodosii the Griaznov: "Last mare."88 The by on to for the first time used rockets [the enemy] signal night parachutes mass-illuminate various districts. It was so bright you could read a news . . .But itwas an ominous paper. The spectacle was stunning in its beauty. see as if itwere could The German beauty. day. And in that bright pilots see illumination could their and you airplanes flying bringing death and destruction. They scour the skies, seek, aim for and destroy their targets."89 here. The urban But Nazi pilots were not the only (un) intended audience was of Within the stage set of the multilayered. siege theatricality spectacle a citizen cast himself?as does how actor, staffage figure, or stage siege, set designer? Iakov Glikin, exclusive? And were these self-constructions mutually a theater artist, relates: "Our reconstruction team worked in the Bolshoi the bombing we would Theater. all go to the shelter, Dramatic During artists would get the paint-covered uniforms of the reconstruction where costumes The of the Moliere's mixed with characters."90 up picturesque terms and forms of theatricality prove to be both contagious and pervasive. of encompassing Often capable finding themselves bereft of descriptors of the observers borrowed the "super-fantastic siege, metaphori reality" in citizens' from the realm of theater. Thus the drastic change cal means to the work of a make-up faces in the autumn of 1941 is compared artist.91 were attempts to use theatrical devices to More drastic, even desperate, we accounts of find mention for the lack of food. In several compensate actual stage props being used on the tables of starving citizens: "Yesterday we had a New Year's Eve party. We drew food on our plates and used stage
props. . . .
On one sian Museum
and the connection the "reality of the spectator" between on the new realization finds the of the during siege: "(un)reality stage" one hand, artists saw their city as theater because such was the tradition of on the other, text and such was their the Petersburg training; professional their actual military task was to turn the city into a stage set. Camouflage the the target audience artists were to "theatricalize" being Leningrad, was course consumer of creation the of this But another enemy-spectator. The
88. 346. 89. F. Griaznov, Lebedev, dnevnik," in Brodskii et al., eds., Khudozhniki
Sausages,
caviar,
salads."92
"Blokadnyi
goroda-fronta,
(St. Petersburg, nogo Leningrada discourse the politicized within
iz blokad li my do tishiny: Zapiski Dozhivem "Iz blokadnogo dnevnika," of the spectator of the position 110. For discussion 2009), see in the twentieth of Petersburg century, theatricality von Geldern, 1917-1920 193-203. Bolshevik Festivals, 1993), (Berkeley, James in Papernaia, 296. 90. Iakov Glikin, ed., Podvigveka, "Dnevnik," 91. 92. Inber, Pochti trigoda, 63. "Pis'ma Iosif Serebrianyi, muzeia khudozhnika Serebrianogo no. 5 istorii Sankt-Peterburga, iz blokadnogo (2000): 146. Leningrada,"
Trudy gosudarstvennogo
Repurposing
Cultural Memory
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
353
a theatrical space could creator him/herself: city into turning the whole a fictional one, not but shift their mode of seeing. Another city, emerged next to the real one. "The most efficient method camou of architectural was the creation of artificial ruins. We would fashion flage destroyed ele ments of a bridge structure out of wood. The night after a severe bombing we would put this fake ruined bridge next to the real one, and paint the real one the color of muddy water. From above the illusion of destruction was "reconstructed" with the use usually complete."93 The ruin is unmade, of theatrical technique and replaced with an "artificial" whole; at the same to time, the military trompe l'oeil of artificial ruins emerges camouflage "nests," and so on). (bridges, machine-gun important strategic objects Artificial ruins serve as pragmatic and eerie doubles for real ones, creating new levels of tension between destruction and creation, authentic object and simulacrum.94 Inber picks up on this slippage in her diary, noting the Pushkin museum-complex curator's shouted exclamation of relief?"The ruins are intact!"?after itwas determined that the famous artificial ruin "Tower" spared
around.
(erected 1780) had not been bombed. With poignant artificial ruins contrast with the real ruins of destroyed
irony, the all palaces
Some of the authors of this artificial, theatrical city describe their act of defense and work not only as a necessary as a but also preservation to reconstruct creative act aimed at the future: "We began the destroyed we buildings. This is not typical architectural work: paint the designs of on the future buildings of huge pieces plywood. Thus, houses become of their future selves, giving artists a rare to assess the models opportunity et contra of their project."95 As the ruins of the siege turn into creative pro use, and decay."96 Ar material, they become "palimpsests of construction, a new level of tificial ruins and other fictions of camouflage introduced to the relationship the city and its citizens. Since the between expressivity main purpose of camouflage to it in the diaries is to hide, direct reactions are rare?but not absent. At times observers to with respond camouflage awe: "The look like huge monsters, military ships by the embankment
93. no. 94. Nikolai 27-52. Nostalgia, Esfir' On Levina, the use "Oruzhiem of ruins 4: 10-11. arkhitektury," StroiteV stvo i arkhitektura and tools Leningrada, 1975, see
as architectural
inspiration
for construction,
resentations
Molok, simulacra, "Capriccio, For fascinating reformulations of urban and destruction, theAbsence ofReason Morozov,
proekt: Ruiny," Voprosy iskusstvovedeniia, of the creative embedded aspirations consult Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics ofDecay: 2006); and Max Page,
1996, no. 2: within rep
Manhattan, 1900-1940 of
95. Mikhail 96. Andreas
(New York, grani
Nothingness, The Creative Destruction ed., Podvig veka,
(Chicago, 1999).
"Voennye arkhitektury,"
306. Destruction and
in Papernaia,
on Russian "Ruins and History: Observations to Schonle, Approaches Slavic Review In his 649. 65, no. 4 (Winter 2006): Decay," forthcoming on the of ruins in Russian "Architecture of Oblivion: Ruins culture, monograph meaning and Historical Consciousness in Modern a whole Schonle to dedicates Russia," chapter the representation of ruins to his the siege. According the ruin however, during reading, or a marker served then as a grim sign of presentness for the future reconstruction, while I focus on the images of ruins that signify the atemporality of the besieged city.
354
Slavic Review
loaded with camouflage 'houses' and . . . 'trees' that billow in the wind. How unusual... is this landscape!"97 of the new aesthetic that the Alongside acknowledgment qualities a to of sets" the there "stage camouflage brought cityscape, emerged more of This the could disturbing impression "impostor" city. impression disturb
and stimulate the imagination Lebedev observes: simultaneously. "Near the Singer house on Nevskii they covered a huge hole with plywood, and on this plywood they painted missing columns, windows, and window sills. The result is fake and creepy, like dentures or a wig."98 the "other" city of camouflage was to a certain extent a symp Obviously as "unreal" as a whole was tom; besieged Leningrad constantly described even to feel like cliches of and "theatrical." Such characterizations began Lebedev remarks: "At night I climbed on the roof: the siege visualization. to itwithout reference view from there is fantastic. But how can I describe
the overused idea of the 'stage set'?"99 in a diary entry by the This somewhat frustrated remark is paralleled sa favorite pupil. Glebova Pavel Filonov's artist Tat'iana Glebova, rejects am not to of "I de the the city: besieged inspired voring tragic spectacle and fires; scribe the beauty of air battles, searchlights, rockets, explosions, so it doesn't and I know what horror this extravaganza delight me, brings, but fillsme with a deep hatred."100 cultural ma beautify the besieged city by way of recycling the preexisting to aestheticize, to defamiliarize trix. They strive to resist the temptation of the pres the traumatic experience the city via a siege gaze that replaces ent with an aestheticized cultural past. on this the notion of a aesthetic affect, I propose Building complex of the sensation sublime visual pain is inextricably whereby siege cityscape and beauty and horror form the multilayered linked with visual pleasure, whole of a psychological species of the sublime palimpsest. This particular functions by blurring historical and temporal limits: while all the city clocks there and death," "froze at their own special time, a time of explosion the urban of in the of the realm temporality emerged, representation, rode tirelessly reactivated Petersburg text, inwhich the Bronze Horseman
Both Lebedev and Glebova apophatically highlight the tendency to
visions of Petrograd's crisis the ruins and in which architectural amongst to It is necessary forced out the reality of Soviet Leningrad.101 of 1919-20 this of character and sometimes the self-contradictory complex register
97. Gritsenko, tion of the British vice during only raison the war: d'etre "Komandirovka architect "The and v is akin to the reac 149. This excitement Leningrad," Ser in the Camouflage who worked artist Hugh Casson, its is purely coincidental, with beauty connection of camouflage
November
a grey to see a through camouflaged building effectively, yet sunset is to receive a tremendous or aflame in the angry light of ajune morning "Art and strange colours." thrill from the flow of its fantastic patterns visual Casson, Hugh 64. Architectural Review 1944): (September by Accident," 149. 98. Lebedev, dnevnik," "Blokadnyi is to conceal 99. Ibid., 358. 100. Tat'iana Glebova, no. "Gorod, "Risovat' 2: 29. kotoryi pokinuli kak letopisets: ptitsy," Stranitsy 168. blokadnogo dnevnika," Iskus
stvo Leningrada, 101. Bianki,
1990,
Repurposing construction
Cultural Memory and to note
in Leningrad,
1941-1944
355
cityscape but many?that of official propaganda and of personal, tortured observation, that born curator and of the "naive" re of the cultured gaze of a Russian Museum to sponse of a ten-year-old Smol'nyi courier. And yet, all these reactions the city were united by the urge to observe the often unrepresentable, a at times, for brief but hardly explicable beauty of the city, beauty that crucial moments, was able to compete with the pain of the siege.
that there was not one

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The Spectacle of the Besieged City: Repurposing Cultural Memory in Leningrad, 19411944 Author(s): Polina Barskova Source: Slavic

Acute Oppositions In January

SlavicReview 69, no. 2 (Summer 2010)

ings and streets monuments of induced

Leningrad by the historical 1941-1995: of Leningrad,

Myth, Memories, "The Iconic and the Allusive:

Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, and Monuments (Cambridge, The Case eds., Image

Jacobowitz, 165. 2003),

and a new quality of vision,

v godyVelikoi Lenin Otechestvennoi niki, skul'ptory, voiny i blokady arkhitektory, iskusstovovedy

100, op. 484.

Figure 2. Entry from the diary of Iurii Kolosov

Pavel Kondrat'ev, chem vospominan'ia:

(10 May khudozhnikov,

in Boris Suris, ed., 1944), 1941-1945 (St. Petersburg,

cyxyMCKOH po30H JHOTOH He?CHOCTbK)

. . . po30BeeT BCe 3TO BeeT.

(Walk amidst this beauty but remember

the rules of the air raid siren.)23

of the animate/inanimate opposition in The Bronze Mythology" regarding the instability

city (by the armyofGeneral Nikolai Iudenich in 1919-20) acquires a new

(Urbana, 2000), 154-70; Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Leningrad, 27-29. Siege of

tersburg outskirts bez ment:

Cultural Repurposing Memory inLeningrad, 1941-1944 337

42. Vera Inber,Pochti trigoda:Leningradskiidnevnik (Moscow, 1968), 279.

Cultural Memory inLeningrad, 1941-1944 339 Repurposing

city became N. Pavlov. 47. here

drying that unity of content

The artistsStepan Iaremich (1869-1939)

and Vladimir Grinberg (1897-1942) mentioned

tationsof thebesieged cityby Pavel Shillingovskii (1881-1942).50 Ostrou

In 1942, Shillingovskiiaddressed the city inhis work for thefirsttime

Writing the Siege of Leningrad, 31.

2003), 3:296. (1943): 5, 4.

see Steven purposes, of and the Restoration 2009).

)KHB,H 6pOH3a ?bIUIHT.

(Here the silhouette of Pushkin and Falconet

of Leningrad's the old and

has "Leningrad is] a city endowed

Inspired by images of the past and appalled by visions of the present,

put his rays into impressionist dnevnik," light." Nikitin, "Blokadnyi

C h^een 3o,zjHero: c 4>Pohtohom, C pe3b6ofi nyryHHOHno 6ajiKOHaM,

H bot Tenepb, noKpbiTbi CTpynbflMH

Ka3ajiHCb?HeT, njiOTb HaC pa36HTa,

KaK 6y#TO ropbKOH, ropbKOH My^pocTbio,

(All the emanations

atmagazines.russ.ru/nlo/2006/81/ba24.html "V osazhdennom gorode," ipoemy Sobranie (Moscow, sochinenii 1989),

(last accessed (Leningrad, 158-59.

Cultural Memory thus envisions

Shcherbacheva, 83. Mikhail 84. siege

of the rats, their jerking impetus drew while to

for detachment artist Alfred

is a crucial Kan tor, who out of

art producing during at the Birkenau death

Repurposing "The Ruins

Cultural Memory Are Intact": The

always there, but, for the participants

a constant scenes," of existence

in the stage action,

and, spectator crucially, . . .The is spectator

goroda-fronta, 87. Yuri

oryofCulture (Bloomington, 1990), 197.