ON DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE COUNTER. SELLERS AND BUYERS OF BESIEGED LENINGRAD

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of the relationship between participants in state trade and private barter operations in besieged Leningrad. The critical shortage of food during the blockade led to a change in the nature of relations between ordinary citizens, on the one hand, and workers in trade, public catering, storage, transportation, and distribution of products, on the other. Extremely emaciated Leningraders were stunned by the prosperous appearance of the counter workers, who bought up and exchanged gold, jewelry, and furs for food. The prosperity of these people against the background of the death of hundreds of thousands determined the extremely hostile attitude of many citizens towards them. The blockade survivors treated extremely emaciated dystrophics with the same hostility. Moreover, the latter were ultimately treated worse than the dishonest "food workers". The glaring inequality was a sign of overestimation of people, rigidly dividing them into well-fed and hungry, successful and losers. This was contrary to the ethical, ideological and political attitudes of the townspeople. At the same time, many blockade survivors were happy, happy, acquiring crumbs of food at fantastically high prices or in exchange for valuables. The ambivalent attitude of Leningraders towards private commerce was associated with the role that commerce played in the fate of many, both robbing and saving at the same time. As sources, the article uses evidence of war and blockade times: diaries, letters, official documents of state authorities and administration, law enforcement, as well as verbal transcripts collected shortly after the blockade and war, interviews and memoirs of citizens of a later time.