Rating: 
Summary: classic epic of human endurance
Review: This is still the definitive work about the human tragedy of the Blockade of Leningrad. The background and military strategy are interesting and important, but the chronicle of the civilian suffering is gut-wrenching and unforgetable. It's been more than a dozen years since I read this, but certain scenes still remain with me: The diary of a little girl whose entire family starved to death. The heroic Young Pioneers and Komsomols hauling water by hand from the frozen Neva to the bakeries. The meager rations of the "bread", baked from sawdust and nearly undigestable. The poet who made a "meat jelly" from her neighbor's leather briefcase. The elderly man who was driven by starvation to eat his beloved pet cat, then afterward hanged himself in his home. The dead, frozen in their beds where they lay and in the streets where they fell, pulled on children's sleds by emaciated relatives, stacked like logs at the cemetery gate, where the ground was too frozen to dig. The silent, cold-eyed "cannibals" in the market selling the ubiquitous ground-meat patties which buyers hoped were dog, rat, or horsemeat. The desperate and dangerous Road of Life over the frozen Lake Ladoga, established and traveled under fire... Only the extraordinary endurance and efforts of the citizens saved Leningrad. Hitler's plan was to erradicate the city and its people. Stalin was perfectly willing to sacrifice them. St. Petersburg still bears the scars from the seige that lasted nearly three years. "Let no one forget. Let nothing be forgotten." Ironically, the human tragedy appears to be repeating itself today in Grozny.
Rating:
Summary: the greatest seige of the 20th century
Review: Yes, Salisbury is a journalist and not a historian - a good and valid point. However, I got more out of the book as a journalistic venture discussing the mistakes and horrors of "the seige" than I would have from reading a history on it per se. Salisbury does a remarkable job of humanizing a mythic and seminal event in the history of the USSR in all its grisly detail. Much has been made of the 900 days Leningraders suffered, earning it the accolade of "Hero City" by Stalin for its will to survive. Salisbury writes of the experience in a manner that allows the reader to empathize with the citizenry of Leningrad - something a historian would never do; however it is precisely this element that makes it such a remarkable book.
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