The Siege of Leningrad

Konstantin Krypton (real name: Konstantin Georgievich Molodetsky, 1902–1994) was a Soviet and American scholar. He graduated from Saratov University and worked in various research and educational institutions. The war found him in Leningrad, where he survived the first, most terrible winter of the blockade, and in mid-1942 he was evacuated. “The Siege of Leningrad” is one of the first books devoted to the tragic events connected with the Leningrad blockade. As a scholar, the author conducts an in-depth analysis of the political, social, and economic aspects— the combination of which, in his view, inevitably led to the death of Leningrad’s population. At the same time, he was himself a witness and direct participant in what was happening, and he provides many invaluable sketches of everyday life, expanding understanding of what truly took place in the city.

The book first appeared in 1953 in the American “Chekhov Publishing House” under the pseudonym Konstantin Krypton, and since then it has not been reissued, becoming a bibliographic rarity. In Russia, it is being published for the first time.