The Lack of Gasoline

Anna Akhmatova in the novel is a real figure. She is one of great Russia’s poetess. She used to give a dictation of speech, which was broadcasted in Leningrad radio. She was known as Leningrad’s “muse of tears.” She was known a feminine, personal and emotional person. However, in one evening during the siege, her voice sounded different when she spoke on the radio saying “my dear fellow citizens, mother, wives and sisters of Leningrad.” For months she was in radio saying “the city of Piter, the city of Lenin, the city of Pushkin, of Dostoyevsky and Blok, the city of great culture and great achievement.” Once she also spoke, “all my life is connected with Leningrad. In Leningrad I became a poet. Leningrad gave my poetry its spirit. I, like all of you now, live with one unconquerable belief that Leningrad never will be Facist.” She was not just a poet and a broadcaster, but she also did something as her duty for her country. After she worked on the radio, she went to the building on the Fontanka, before that time the building was known as Sheremetyev Palace, and she lived there. Anna Akhmatova sewed bags for sand which were used as protection of the shelter trenches in the gardens. One day, she wrote her poem “Poem Without Herp” under a great maple tree. During September she did many things for her country, sitting at her posts, guarding the roofs, placing the sandbags, writing her poems, it can be said that she fighting for her country. In the reality also, she, like many other people in Leningrad, accepted evacuation to Tashkent in distant Central Asia 285. According to Townsend, the poverty is an inability to participate in the activities is fit to this case as cited by Turner, 2006, p. 462. There is also Park and Mason’s opinion that there are also deprivations of civil rights and social influence as cited by Turner, 2006, p. 349. Many Leningrad people were no longer can work or do what they used to do. Some lost their jobs and some had to stop working and apply to the army and fight the enemy.

5. The Waves of Evacuation

Because of the war, women and children were evacuated from their home. So they had to live separately from their families and friends. One family could not live together like they used to be. In his novel, Benioff 2008 mentions that Lev, the main character, told about evacuation in his city;Leningrad.His family and friends were evacuated, while and he stayed in his city to struggle with the others. He also said that most of the small children were evacuated before the Germans closed the circle in September p. 9. According to Salisbury 2003, during the war, there was a very serious miscalculation somewhere, but later, the factual material published in the last few years shows that this tragic situation was actually created by a whole series of specific mistakes. There had been lack of foresight slowing down the Germans advance, had given almost no thought at all to the question of food supplies inside the city. There was also for several weeks, when the Germans seemed to have been stopped on the Luga Line, there was an excess of optimistic propaganda. This was responsible for much wishful thinking among the people of Leningrad, who simply did not realize their city being either occupied or blockaded at that time p. 292.