Observation man at the river embankment
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Armed guard at the Winter Palace
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
One of St. Petersburg’s most famous buildings, the Winter Palace was the official residence of the Russian Emperors from 1732 to 1917. Catherine the Great enlarged and transformed the Palace, and filled it with the art collection that would become the basis for the Hermitage Museum. After the 1917 Revolution, when the Palace was besieged and stormed by the Bolshevik Army, the Palace became an iconic symbol of the deposed regime. The storming of the Palace was reenacted by the Bolshevik Army and was depicted by Sergei Eisenstein in his 1928 film October: Ten Days That Shook the World.
During the Siege of Leningrad, all artifacts were moved to the lower floors of the Palace due to military experts’ belief that the walls and arches on the lower floors would be able to withstand air attacks and artillery bombardment from the Nazi forces. Nevertheless, the Palace did sustain significant damage, especially to its windows, three thousand of which were blown out by shells in March 1942. Of one bombing in January 1943, Hermitage security chief Pavel Philippovich Boubshevski wrote, “The Winter Palace shook like a frail boat in a stormy sea. The monstrous blast was absorbed by all Hermitage buildings. The blast went through the Hanging Garden [in the Small Hermitage], burst into the Pavilion Hall, and knocked out the remaining window panes, even those facing the Neva. Dozens of windows were again yawning with emptiness. During the night the blizzard began. It formed together with shattered glass, forming a solid crust of ice.” (quoted in “Protecting the Art of Leningrad,” Lane Bailey, available at this link.)
Despite the damage, the Palace was fully restored after the War and is now part of the world-renowned Heritage Museum, and is the oldest building in the Hermitage complex.
Automatic-rifle men guarding Kirov Bridge
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Known as Trinity Bridge when it opened to the public in 1903, on the 200-year anniversary of the city’s founding, this bridge was renamed Kirov Bridge following the murder of Sergei Kirov, head of the Leningrad Communist Party, in 1934. At the time of its construction, it was the third permanent bridge across the Neva. With its cast-iron gratings and colored lanterns, the bridge is considered a landmark of Art Nouveau design in Russia. It was the city’s longest bridge until 1965, when the Alexander Nevsky Bridge was built; its original name of Trinity was restored in 1991.
The bridge connects Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt in the Petrogradsky District of St. Petersburg to Suvorov Square. In the background of this picture, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original citadel of the city, can be seen. The Fortress was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and served as both a military base and a prison and execution ground as late as the 1920s. The fortress suffered heavy damage during the Siege, but was restored after the war and has now been adapted as the central part of the State Museum of Saint Petersburg History.
Sentry post on the Neva embankment
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Dawn is near. From the printing shop the fresh newspapers will go to the dispatch department and then be delivered to the numerous booths throughout the city
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Front line men can buy their papers without having to queue up
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
St. Isaac Cathedral
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
St. Isaac’s Cathedral was commissioned by Tsar Alexander I in 1818 and completed forty years later, in 1858. The cathedral was dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great, and at the time was the city’s main church and the largest cathedral in Russia. In the 1930s, the cathedral was transformed into a museum. Its neoclassical exterior shows strong influences from Italian architecture; the bronze doors are modeled after the doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni in Florence, and the gilded dome has been compared to Andrea Palladio’s Villa La Rotonda outside Vicenza. The dome was famously photographed from an R-5 bomber plane in 1931 by Soviet photographer Boris Ignatovich, who took some of the first aerial photographs of Leningrad; the photograph can be seen at this link.
During the Siege, the famous dome of the cathedral was painted over in gray to camouflage it from Nazi aircraft; at the same time, the military used the cathedral’s skylight to help determine the positions of German artillery. Despite some shelling and slight damage to its columns during the war, St. Isaac’s Cathedral remained intact and stands to this day as one of the most recognizable landmarks in Russia.
Through all these grim days cultural life continued in the front line city Leningrad. In December the Leningrad City Theatre gave the premiere of the ballet “Esmeralda"
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
The Leningrad City Theatre staged several performances during the Siege. The last to premiere was La Esmeralda, a ballet inspired by Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, which was performed thirty-one times from December 1942 until the end of the war. The production had three scenes, and the story’s tragic ending was omitted. Because so many men were either fighting the war or defending the city during the siege, the performance included almost exclusively female dancers. “There are no men even for mime roles,” one attendee of the premiere noted in his diary, “and depicting the modest number of police constables on their night-time beat of the streets and squares of Paris, scattering the crowd from the square and beating Quasimodo, fell to women dressed in male costumes.”
In addition, because the theatre was so cold, secondary dancers performed during rehearsals in fur coats, boots, and gloves, while primary dancers endured the low temperatures wearing only their costumes. For the performances, everyone on stage braved the cold. The dancer Natalia Sakhnovskaya wrote in her diary: “We have to do our make-up still wearing our coats, the temperature is low, though the electricity is working, and yet we still have to wear tights and ballet costumes... The girls are so slim and refined in their ballet tunics, shivering from the cold and anxiety. Any warm-ups are in vain, the legs just stay cold...We have made this little stage our own and have come to love our tiny Siege Theatre.” Another person at the premiere noted that at the end of the performance, the audience took of their gloves so that they could clap louder.
Information courtesy of the Mariinsky Theatre website and archive: https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/about/ww2/1942
Standing watch on board a warship
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
This image of watchmen on board a warship shows the influence of the avant-garde on Russian photography and photojournalism. The photograph is taken from a low vantage point and has a strong diagonal composition, emphasized by the two soldiers on watch, the staircase that connects them, and the netting stretching into the upper-left corner of the frame; an opposing diagonal line divides the ship from the lighter tone of the sky in the background. Both soldiers stand erect, the very picture of vigilance and determination.
Torpedo gunners on board a submarine
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
In this image, the photographer has captured an unusual sight: the interior of a submarine, a vessel that was critical to the Soviet navy during the Siege. Because the specific machinery of Soviet submarines was classified information, it was extremely rare for a photographer to be allowed to capture and disseminate such images. This photograph has a painterly quality due to the static nature of the figures and the flattened, almost two-dimensional sense of space in the compressed interior of the vessel. The emphasis in the image is on both the complexity of the technical equipment inside the submarine and the attentive, purposeful demeanor of the torpedo gunners inside. At the start of World War II, the Soviet Baltic fleet was the largest on the Baltic Sea, with 68 submarines that actively attacked the German and Finnish fleets and interrupted enemy shipping and transportation. Toward the end of the war, Soviet submarines suffered significant damage, and the focus of both the Axis and the Allied forces shifted to a land war.
Guards gunner loading a shell
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Like many of the photographs in this collection - all of which were specifically created and printed for exhibition purposes, not as press photograph- this image has a pictorial feel, and a composition similar to a formal painted portrait. The soft yet dramatic lighting is reminiscent of Dutch painting, and draws attention to both the determination in the soldier’s face and the gleam of the large shell he is loading into his weapon. The detail of his thick, fur-lined coat calls to mind the freezing temperatures under which so many worked, fought, and lived during the Siege.
This motor, assembled at a Leningrad plant, will be installed in one of the heavy guns defending the city's approaches
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
This image is suffused with soft, warm light, which dramatically outlines the worker’s face as he focuses intently on the task at hand. The photograph celebrates the industriousness of plants and factories in Leningrad, which continued to produce weaponry, armor, and ammunition throughout the Siege, despite artillery bombardments that directly targeted industrial buildings.
Damaged in action, this tank will soon be repaired and return to battle
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
The guns of one of the Red Navy Baltic warships which guard Leningrad
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
German mine dump captured by the Red Army
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Carrying a gas-bag for barrage balloons
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
A belt of ack-ack guns girdles the city, day and night watchfully ready to repulse enemy air pirates
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
The approaches to Leningrad are vigilantly guarded
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
A battery of the guards preparing to shell the enemy positions
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Leningrad war factories produce formidable weapons of war
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Despite the desperation and devastation wrought by the Siege and the war, some photographers managed to find beauty in the life and work that continued in St. Petersburg. In this image, warm light glows from the factory windows. The large-caliber guns stretching from the artillery help to create a classical triangular composition, anchored by the two workers atop their weapons.
Hero of the Soviet Union, A. Stepanov
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
The city has carefully covered and camouflaged the statue of Lenin
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Setting out on offensive combat assignment!
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Anti-tank obstacles erected on the city's outskirts
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
An A.R.P. observation post
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Many Leningrad girls have joined the volunteer fire fighter brigades. They successfully combat fires caused by enemy shells and fire-bombs
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Commandant patrol checking credentials
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
The city's morning toilet. Clearing the streets of snow
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
“Come on, let’s dig a trench!”
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
There are always many readers in the Leningrad libraries
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Red Navy men of the Baltic fleet
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
The play "Wide Stretches the Seq" was written and staged in Leningrad during the blockade
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
The outstanding poet Nikolai Tikhonov, of Leningrad. He has been awarded a Stalin Prize for his verses dedicated to his heroic native city
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Born in 1896 in St. Petersburg, the poet Nikolai Tikhonov achieved his first success in 1922 with the collection Orda (The Horde). Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, he traveled throughout the Soviet Union and Asia, writing both verse and prose, and both travel essays and war stories. He was a founder and prominent member of the Serapion Brothers or Serapion Fraternity, a group of writers that formed in Petrograd in 1921. Although he received a Stalin Prize for his work during the Siege, and became chair of the Union of Soviet Writers after the war, he was soon dismissed from that post for his support of the dissident writers Mikhail Zoshchenko (a fellow Serapion Brother) and Anna Akhmatova. In 1957, he received the Lenin Peace Prize, and from 1949-79, he was the first chairman of the Soviet Peace Committee. He was also the recipient of three Orders of Lenin and two additional Stalin Prizes.
One of the most talented Leningrad painters, A. V. Serov, working on a canvas depicting a heroine Russian woman. It is called "The Last Bullet" and shows a Russian partizan girl who is surrounded by the enemy
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Serov (1910-1968) worked mainly in the style of socialist realism, depicting historical and revolutionary scenes that were reproduced on posters and in Soviet textbooks. He studied under the artists Savely Schleifer and V. E. Savinsky and attended the All-Russian Academy of Arts and the Graduate School of the Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Moscow. He remained in Leningrad throughout the Siege, and was a member of a group of artists known as “Boyevoy karandash," or “The Fighting Pencil.” In addition to nudes and still lifes, he produced paintings and posters celebrating the October Revolution, the Russian War effort, and Vladimir Lenin. After the war, he illustrated famous Russian novels and poems, including War and Peace and works by Pushkin and Gorky. He was made a member of the All-Union Communist party of the Bolsheviks in 1942, a member of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR in 1958, and a member of the Central Audit Commission of the Communist party of the Soviet Union in 1961. He died in 1968 in Moscow.
Since the outbreak of war the writer Vsevolod Vishnevsky has been working as special war correspondent on the Leningrad front
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Born in 1900 in St. Petersburg, Vsevolod Vishnevsky was an accomplished military figure as well as an acclaimed writer. He served as a sea cadet in the Baltic Fleet in World War I and a machine gunner in the army during the Russian Civil War. He published his first works when he was only twenty years old, and had his first success in 1929 with his play The First Horse Army, set during the Civil War. His most famous play, Optimistic Tragedy, was published in 1933, and was adapted into a blockbuster movie of the same name in 1963. During the Siege, Vishnevsky worked as a correspondent for Pravda. He was a recipient of the Stalin Prize, the Order of Lenin, and the Order of the Red Star, among other awards and medals. He died shortly after the war, in 1951.
Thousands of patriots give their blood for wounded Red Army men
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Administering electro-therapy in a naval hospital
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Senior Red Cross nurse A. Kozlova sees that wounded men receive meals on time (Photo by E. Mikulina)
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
This image is credited to the photographer Elizaveta Mikulina, who worked as a photojournalist for Ogoniok, one of the oldest weekly illustrated magazines in Russia, and was a member of the Russian Society of Proletarian Photographers (ROPF), an organization that adhered to realism in photography in opposition to the famous October group. Her pioneering role as a female photojournalist served as an inspiration to younger female photographers in the Soviet Union, including Galina Sanko, who thanked Mikulina and Olga Ignatovich for showing her that women were capable of succeeding in the profession.
Before the war, in 1936, Mikulina was also the subject of a landmark case that helped aid the recognition of photography as an independent art form in Russia. In his book Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust, David Schneer writes, “Questions around [photographic] rights even ended up in court, such as when Elizaveta Mikulina was ruled innocent by the Moscow City Court of violating an artist’s rights when she photographed a piece of art to use in her own photographic work. The case proved that photographers were not simply reproducing someone else’s art but were producing a new independent artistic work."
Observation scout at his post
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
The Neva in December
Mat window size 8 x 5 1/2 in. (20.3 x 14 cm)
Mat 13 x 10 in. (33 x 25.4 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
Winter's day in Leningrad
Mat window size 5 1/2 x 8 in. (14 x 20.3 cm)
Mat 10 x 13 in. (25.4 x 33 cm)
Stamped American Russian Cultural Association, NYC
This photograph of a winter’s day in Leningrad features the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange, constructed between 1805 and 1810, and the famous Rostral Columns that were erected on either side of the building in 1811. Designed by the French architect Thomas de Thomon, who was inspired by the Greek Temple of Hera at Paestum in Campania, Italy, the building and its columns are considered important examples of Greek Revival architecture and are located on Vasilevsky Island, just opposite the Winter Palace. A monumental sculpture of Neptune and his chariot is mounted above the portico of the building.
The Rostral Columns, a type of column that was used in ancient Greece and Rome to celebrate naval victories, symbolize the major importance that the city has held historically as a strategic port. The columns are decorated with bronze anchors and bronze ship prows, known in Latin as “rostra”; and at the base of the columns sit four statues that represent Russia’s four major rivers: the Volga, Dnieper, Neva, and Volkhov. To this day, the columns are lit with torches on major public holidays. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the building was converted to house the collection of the Central Naval Museum; in 2013, the building was transferred to the ownership of the Hermitage Museum, which will use it to house the museum’s heraldry collection.
As the coronavirus pandemic forces half of the world’s population into lockdown, many of us are experiencing for the first time the sense that we are living under a kind of siege. The streets of New York, Paris, London, Delhi, and other major cities around the globe are deserted, as citizens isolate themselves in their homes; flights are grounded; and businesses large and small are shuttered.
In this time of crisis, we turn to art and history as a way to understand the reality of the present moment. This May marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, a global conflict that led to horrific violence and unimaginable suffering. To commemorate this important anniversary, we are offering an exhibition of rare vintage photographs of the Siege of Leningrad, the longest, costliest, and destructive siege in modern history. This anniversary reminds us how vital it is both to learn from the past and to draw strength from the lessons of history, in order to persevere through the difficulties that we face today. Blockaded by the military forces of Nazi Germany from 8 September 1941 until 27 January 1944, the citizens of Leningrad were trapped in their own city without food, heat, or electricity for 872 days. Estimates of the death toll range up to 1.5 million people, more than one third of the city’s population, mostly from starvation but also from the extreme cold and from shelling. In the words of one anonymous poet, quoted by Polina Barskova in her book Besieged Leningrad: “The living wander like phantoms, / And so many dead are carried away on sleds! / At the morgue they’re stacked like sticks of firewood. / I can’t describe this! My words are too weak!”
Despite the horror of the siege, many did try to describe it — poets, writers, painters, photographers, and other artists. This exhibition presents a group of photographs of Leningrad taken in 1941 and 1942 and exhibited in the United States during the war, in a show organized by the American-Russian Cultural Association; several of the photographs were reproduced in the official bulletin of the Embassy of the USSR in Washington, DC in 1943. The official government policy was to show only uplifting, optimistic images, especially to the West; even Russians outside Leningrad did not know the true extent of the devastation. Despite the fact that these images were commissioned for propaganda purposes, they still evoke the atmosphere of Leningrad during the siege, and capture the remarkable extent to which social, economic, and cultural life was continuing in such extreme circumstances. The photographers capture the printing and sale of newspapers, so crucial for information to the trapped inhabitants; the war factories producing weaponry for use at the front; citizens performing “the city’s morning toilet,” clearing the streets of snow; readers in the Leningrad libraries; painters, writers, and poets at work; the staging of plays and ballets; and nurses administering treatments in the city’s hospitals. This rare discovery comprises forty-one vintage gelatin silver prints, beautifully printed with a wide, subtle range of tones on warm paper.
Looking at these images during the current pandemic and quarantine, we feel more than ever the intensity of human suffering throughout history, the preciousness of human life and human creativity, and the vital role that art plays in helping us to process moments of crisis and trauma.
