The Siege Diary of Lena Mukhina

The fact that the blockade diary of schoolgirl Lena Mukhina survived is, in itself, a miracle. In 1962 it ended up in the Leningrad Party archive (now the Central State Archive of Historical-Political Documents of St. Petersburg) and has been kept there to this day. We know the «adult» accounts of that monstrous, not fully studied phenomenon called the Leningrad Blockade: «Memoirs» by D.S. Likhachov, «Notes of a Blockade Person» by L.Ya. Ginzburg, «The Blockade Diary» by G.A. Knyazev, «Memoirs of the Blockade» by V.M. Glinka, and many others. But «children’s» testimony is scarce. One can name only one thing by the power of its impact on the reader: the diary of Yura Ryabinkin, included in the Leningrad Gospel—«The Blockade Book» by D. Granin and A. Adamovich. And now—the diary of Lena Mukhina.

What can be set against the torment of dying of hunger when accepted moral norms collapse? What can save one from spiritual degradation when the struggle for survival strips a person of a «human face,» and hunger and the fear of death turn a human being into an animal? One of the means of salvation was the alphabet—the order of letters. An attempt, through words, to make sense of what is happening, to understand oneself. And also: an intuitive knowledge that one must preserve one’s history, one’s experience—for others.

Once, Lena dreamed of writing a book together with a friend—«one you would want to read, but which, unfortunately, does not exist.» That book exists. And it is evidence that in the most inhuman times people tried to preserve their human essence. This is what gives us hope today.

The diary has been prepared for publication by employees of the St. Petersburg Institute of History, RAS.