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.
The people of Leningrad should be evacuated, but there was a very slow progress of the evacuation in July and August was due to what people called a
wishful thinking: people did not believe that the Germans would come anywhere near the city. Because of the danger of air-raids, children began to be evacuated in
June and early July, but it was oddthat places like Gatchina and Luga became the evacuation area, sincethey were on the Germans’ direct road to Leningrad. Soon
they had to be brought back to Leningrad, and some were then evacuated to the east, where they remained in perfect safety until the end of war.
The process of the evacuation during July and August was very slow. There were only 4,000 people, mostly workers of plants earmarked for evacuation,
and their families were evacuated to the east, they were also 150,000 refugees from the Baltic RepublicsmPskovm etc.
In January 1942, the mass-evacuation of civilians started across the Ice Road of Lake Ladoga. In this time, hundreds of thousands of civilians had already
died of hunger p. 293. Children who lived in dormitory were evacuated too p. 415.
The living conditions of Leningrad people were totally affected by the war at that time. As said by Park and Mason, deprivation is not only seen in economy
aspect, but also the other aspects, including deprivation of civil rights. They also categorize deprivations into those affecting control needs as cited by Turner,
2006, p. 349.
6. The Mass Death of Leningrad People
After experienced many kinds of suffering, the last thing that they had to face was death. People who could not survive were eventually died. Lack of basic
needs also became the factors of death. There is a scene that Benioff 2008 describes when Lev and Kolya passed a railway during their searching for eggs,
thenthey saw corpses just laying on the road. Lev described his thought over the view.
The rails veered away from the road, past stands of birch saplings too slender for firewood. Five white bodies lay facedown in the white snow. A
family of winter dead, the dead father still clutching his dead wife’s hand, their dead children sprawled a short distance away. Two battered leather
suitcases lay open beside the corpses, emptied of everything but a few cracked picture frames. The family’s clothes and boots had been hacked
off, the softest meat, easiest for making patties and sausages. I couldn’t tell if the family had been murdered by gunfire, or knives, or an exploding
shell, by German artillerymen or Russian cannibals. I didn’t want to know. They had been dead for a long time, at least a week, and their bodies had
started to become part of landscape p. 125-6. The dead were everywhere in Piter: stacked in great heaps behind the city
morgue; burned in the fire pits outside the Piskarevsky Cemetery; scattered across the ice of Lake Ladoga, something for seagulls to pick at,
if there were still seagulls. But this was a lonelier place to quit than anywhere else I’d seen p. 102.
The final result from the Siege of Leningrad is death. After experiencing
the extreme winter, starvation and countless suffering, most of Leningrad people were eventually dead.
The December death toll was 53,000 persons, more or less- equal to that for the whole of 1940. The total was nearly five times that of the
admittedly incomplete figure of 11,085 in November. Party members tottered into regional offices, put their cards on the desk and wandered off,
mumbling, “Tomorrow I’ll dies...”
