Summary of Anna Reid's Leningrad

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 On the morning of 22 June 1941, Dmitri Likhachev, a scholar of medieval Russian literature, was sunbathing with his wife and daughters on the sand martin-busy banks of the River Oredezh. They overheard snatches of a terrifying conversation about Kronshtadt being bombed. #2 The Leningraders were better prepared for the Second World War than other Soviet citizens, because they had seen its prequel in 1939. The Soviet Union had occupied not only eastern Poland, but also the Baltic states to Leningrad’s west and the lake-fretted southern marches of Finland, directly to its north. #3 The war with Finland in particular provided a foretaste of the difficulties that lay ahead for the Soviet Union. The Russians expected the war to be very short, but it ended up being a humiliation. #4 The first twenty-two months of the Second World War seemed distant to Leningraders, as they were caught up in the street-corner loudspeakers, the notice board wall newspapers, and the agitators at the endless workplace meetings that told them that the capitalists were tearing each other apart.