This old photo I recently came across fascinates me. From 1937, it depicts a gas mask drill and the participants are the Pioneers of Leningrad. The Pioneers were a Soviet youth organization similar to the Boy Scout movement of the west. They learned skills related to civic and social cooperation with social gatherings and summer camps in order to create good, loyal Soviet citizens.
Beyond the obvious weirdness of the image, the photo carries the haunting thought that just four short years later many of these young people would most likely perish in the Siege of Leningrad.
For 900 days, the Nazis held Leningrad, which it had been unable to take by force, in siege attempting to starve the city into submission. Over a third of the city’s population- over 800,00 people– died during the Siege. Most died from the depths of starvation that found the citizens eating anything at their disposal– sawdust, wallpaper, and any and all pets.
It’s a horror that is hard for us, so far removed from that place and that war, to fathom yet it happened just a little over 70 years back. Some of those children in the photo, if they were fortunate to survive the war and the siege, could easily be alive today. I am sure when the photo was taken they felt strong and prepared to face whatever adversity lay ahead. They had no idea what the future truly held.
For today’s Sunday morning music I am using a song that relates in a way to the photo. It’s Red Army Blues from the Irish band The Waterboys‘ 1985 album, A Pagan Place.
The song tells the story of a Soviet soldier in WWII who somehow survives the war and comes in contact with American troops. Joseph Stalin felt that troops who were taken prisoner were weak and traitors to the Soviet state and that troops who came in contact with Allied troops were in danger of being Westernized. So after the war, many Red Army troops who had been held as POWs or had much contact with western troops were considered a threat to the state and were sent directly to the gulags where many would die while working and starving in forced labor camps. We’re talking in the millions here.
I bring up this dark page in history because of our current head of state’s recent warming up to Russia where Vladimir Putin has began reintroducing Stalin era thinking to that country. Time and fading memories have made the horrors that Stalin inflicted on his people somehow palatable. The gulags, the purges, and the artificial famines that killed millions of Soviets seem to be a distant memory now and there is actually a bit of nostalgia for Stalin. Hence, Putin’s rise.
But the memory of these things, these atrocities against his own people and humanity, should never be relinquished. If forgotten they are only a moment from becoming the present.
This is a pretty interesting video of Red Army Blues with a lot of great Soviet footage of that time which means that some of it is grisly and disturbing. Unfortunately, that is what much of our history entails. It’s worth a listen and a view.
Have a great day
Wow…hard to see, hear and read. Man’s inhumanity knows no bounds. We hope it won’t happen again, but it keeps happening. So depressing.
But, I’m encouraged to see people here know enough to “resist.”
Yes, Jackie, we so often forget those things that we should always remember– until it’s too late.
thank you,haven’t listened to the Waterboys in a long time! Great band. You’ve got me revisiting bands of that era ( Aztec Camera, The Church, Billy Bragg, etc. )
In regards to the subject matter of the song, I knew Stalin was pure evil, but had no idea of his treatment of his own soldiers. Relating this to current events can make for a disturbing outlook. Can we prevent history from repeating itself or does it always go through its inevitable cycle? I think we need to remain positive and hopeful and keep informed to help prevent the tragedies from occurring again.
I believe that history never fully really repeats itself but it does move in cycles and patterns that we definitely repeat. So, knowing history and comparing then and now is an important task in order to remain vigilant. It’s funny that you mentioned Aztec Camera– I was thinking about them just the other day for the first time in eons!
Did a brief stint at the Defense Language Institute while in the USAF. One of our teacher’s war stories were about WWI in Lithuania, but the other’s war stories were about growing up under Stalin and being a teenager in Leningrad during the siege. She would not have a doorbell on her house because under Stalin when the doorbell rang at night, that meant the KGB had come to take someone away and you would never see them again. She would not have a washing machine, nor go to a laundromat, and hired a lady to take her clothes and wash them for her because washing machines on spin cycle sounded too much like the German Junkers that bombed Leningrad on a regular basis for 872 days. She found the corpse of her best friend half eaten. Many people who died in winter froze and laid under the snow and weren’t found or accounted for until the spring thaw. She and her parents gradually burned every stick of furniture in their apartment to keep warm.
We as a nation don’t know how fortunate we are in never having had a world war fought on our soil Europe had two. I have this terrible feeling that our charmed history is about to come to an end. I have the terrible feeling that the buffoon in the oval office is being used as a stalking horse by people who are much, much worse.
Those things are hard to hear or read but they need to known. Unfortunately, many of us have a foolish ignorance of that all too recent history. That’s not a good thing. I,too, have been harboring that same terrible feeling that is filled with visions of darker days ahead.I hope to be wrong. God, how I hope we are wrong.