War Within

In September 1941, two and a half months after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the German Wehrmacht encircled Leningrad. Cut off from the rest of Russia, the city remained blockaded for 872 days, at a cost of almost a million civilian lives, making it one of the longest and deadliest sieges in modern history.The War Within chronicles the Leningrad blockade from the perspective of those who endured the unendurable. Drawing on 125 unpublished diaries written by individuals from all walks of Soviet life, Alexis Peri tells the tragic story of how citizens struggled to make sense of a world collapsing around them. Residents recorded in intimate detail the toll taken on minds and bodies by starvation, bombardment, and disease. For many, diary writing became instrumental to survival—a tangible reminder of their humanity. The journals also reveal that Leningraders began to reexamine Soviet life and ideology from new, often critical perspectives.Leningrad’s party organization encouraged diary writing, hoping the texts would guide future histories of this epic battle. But in a bitter twist, the diarists became victims not only of Hitler but also of Stalin. The city’s isolation from Moscow made it politically suspect. When the blockade was lifted in 1944, Kremlin officials censored publications describing the ordeal and arrested hundreds of Leningrad’s wartime leaders. Many were executed. Diaries—now dangerous to their authors—were concealed in homes, shelved in archives, and forgotten. The War Within recovers these lost narratives, shedding light on one of World War II’s darkest episodes.

Synthesize[s] dozens of accounts to powerful and illuminating effect…A fascinating, insightful, and nuanced work that incorporates much fresh research. Particularly rewarding is the close attention Peri pays to language., [A] fascinating and perceptive book., A remarkable record of 125 unpublished diaries written by the blokadniki who endured the 872-day siege of Leningrad from 1941–44… Much has been written about Leningrad’s heroic resistance. But the remarkable aspect of the Boston University professor’s book is that she tells a very different story: recounting the internal struggles of ordinary people desperately trying to survive and make sense of their fate., Stand aside, Homer. I doubt whether even the author of the Iliad could have matched Alexis Peri’s account of the 872-day siege which Leningrad endured after Hitler’s army encircled the city in September 1941…[A] magnificent narrative., The battle for Leningrad lasted 1,127 days; the city was under siege for 900 of them. Between 1.6 million and two million Soviet citizens died, 800,000 of them civilians—40 percent of the city’s prewar population. (As Peri points out, the overall death toll approximates the total number of members of the U.S. military who died in war between 1776 and 1975.) Leningrad residents of all types—from factory foremen to teachers, party workers to professional writers—kept diaries during the ordeal. Peri searches through 125 of them to capture how the nightmare deconstructed the writers’ prior realities and altered their sense of humanity. Her portrait is a sensitive, at times almost poetic examination of their emotions and disordered mental states. It both contrasts with and complements the equally accurate official Soviet portrait of a stalwart population standing firm in the face of evil and in defense of Soviet ideals. Peri makes plain that even though the diarists endured the total transformation of their fundamental sense of reality, their social relationships, and the nature of their social order, most of them did not become alienated from the values and basic outlook of the Soviet system.

Alexis Peri is Associate Professor of History at Boston University, where she received the Gerald and Deanne Gitner Family Prize in Undergraduate Teaching.