Продовольственное обеспечение блокадного Ленинграда в стенограммах сообщений сотрудников пищевых предприятий города 1942–1945 годов
Food Supply in Besieged Leningrad in Transcripts of Reports from Employees of the City’s Food Enterprises in 1942–1945

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of verbatim records of conversations with employees of food industry and public catering enterprises of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War. The work on collecting these materials was carried out by the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1942–1948. The study of the surviving verbatim records of messages, taking into account the historical context of their creation, as well as the social characteristics of the respondents, allows us to enhance their representativeness. This is also facilitated by the choice of an anthropological approach in interpreting their content. For the study of food supply in Leningrad during the war, records of conversations with employees of food enterprises, which recorded their memories “hot on the heels”, play an important role not only in terms of the facts given in the records, but also in constructing the logic of the narrative, illuminated or, conversely, hushed up stories. The selected contingent of respondents took direct part in organizing production and overcoming the difficulties that arose as a result of resource shortages. In wartime conditions, defense-related enterprises focused on providing the country’s military-industrial complex traditionally come to the fore. Food production, connected with the provision of not only the army but also the needs of the civilian population, fades into the background. The author comes to the conclusion that in the conditions of the hunger blockade for Leningraders the work of these city enterprises became the main one, the survival of people cut off from regular food supplies depended on it. In addition, work in food production gave additional opportunities to avoid starvation to certain categories of the population. All the listed stories are reflected in the transcripts considered in this article.

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