LENINGRAD STATE OF SIEGE REVIEW | CITIES AND WAR

by - July 29, 2025

 


SINOPSIS

The siege of Leningrad, which the Germans held for 782 days, from September 1941 to January 1944, was one of the most heroic episodes of the WWII and one of the most terribles sieges in history. The Germans bombed the city consecutively in days, forcing the inhabitants to starve and resort to cannibalism to survive. In January 1942 they left the city without electricity or water. Hitler had ordered that no surrender proposal should be accepted. His purpose was to exterminate all the inhabitants, as he did not want any survivors to feed. The collective will of its inhabitants not to be crushed by the Germans, at the cost of almost a million dead, was what prevented them from being occupied. Michael Jones has reconstructed this extraordinary story based mainly on the testimony of the survivors.      


REVIEW

Hello citizens! This time I would like to review a book that surprised me a lot in different ways. There are many books and documentaries about WWII regarding what happened in cities in Poland, France, Germany, Japan, etc., but little in Russia. Few events in history expose the fragility and resilience of cities like the 872-days siege of Leningrad during WWII. 


leningrad siege


Michael Jones' The Siege of Leningrad is a meticulously reserched yet deeply human account of one of the most brutal episodes in modern warfare. Through diaries, survivor testimonies, and historical records, the author reconstructs the suffering of a city that endured starvation, bombardment, and unimaginable deprivation. 

This book is more than a historical record, it is a meditation on the limits of human endurance and the precariousness of urban life under siege. 


The fragility and resilience of cities

Cities are often seen as bastions of civilization-hubs of innovation, culture, and economic power. Yet, the siege of Leningrad laid bare their vulnerability. When supply lines were severed, the electricity failed and the bureaucratic machinery collapsed, the city's thin veneer of modernity crumbled like a house of cards. The siege proved that urban life is not a given, it is a delicate balance that depends on functioning infrastructure, stable governance and, most importantly, the cooperation of its citizens.

Leningrad WWII



"Neither transportation nor communication systems work, and conveniences such as light, water, electricity or gas have become legends. Staying in the streets for a few hours one comes across dozens of corpses, lying in the snow, and carts loaded with the dead. Food prices on the black market have reached exorbitant levels, and people feed on the most chilling filth, from jelly made from carpenter's glue to the innermost portions of corpses. The squalid inhabitants of the city, driven by sheer desperation, are turning into savages."


Before the war, Leningrad was a thriving metropolis, a symbol of Soviet progress. But under the siege, public services disappeared, law enforcement eroded and survival became a personal struggle. The collapse was not instantaneous but a slow unraveling: first came food shortages, then transport breakdown, and finally the failure of heating systems during one of Russia's coldest winters. 

The city fragility lay not only its material needs, but in its "social pact". When famine came, some resorted to theft, hoarding or even violence, while others organized communal kitchens, shared scarce rations and maintained makeshift hospitals. The difference between social collapse and collective resistance was a human choice.

Leningrad winter


"Death has become an everyday ocurrence and people have grown used to it. Everyone is apathetic, aware that this is the fate awaiting us all. If not today, then tomorrow. When you step outside in the morning, you find lying in the street. They remain there for a long time - no one comes to take them away"


 Resilience is often discussed in contemporary urban planning as a city's ability to "bounce back" after disaster. But Leningrad's story complicates this idea. The city did not simply recover, it adapted in real time to unthinkable conditions. People burned books, and turned public spaces into mass graves. This was not resilience in the sense of restoration, but resilience as radical improvisation.

Thanks to this book, I was able to realize that the resilience of a city also depends on its institutions. Leningrad's rulers, through flawed and often ruthless, managed to maintain some appearance of order. But real resilience came from below: from the teachers who taught in freezing classrooms, from the musicians who performed symphonies in the midst of air raids; and from the ordinary people who documented their suffering in diaries. 

rusia genocide

This duality, control from above and resilience from below made me question modern urban resilience strategies. Can a city survive a catastrophe without strong institutions and an engaged citizenry?

 

"The theatre became an island of joy in a sea of suffering... And yet, it grew harder and harder to go on. Outside, the temperature was forty-eight degrees below zero. Inside, there was no heating. An operetta began. The performers wore light costumes — their faces pale and gaunt, but smiling. The dancers were so thin they looked as though they might snap in two. Some collapsed between scenes. When the curtain fell, the audience rose from their seats. Too weak to applaud, they showed their gratitude by standing in silence — briefly, for several minutes"


The Leningrad ordeal may seem like a distant historical tragedy, but its lessons resonate today. Modern cities depend on supply chains, centralized utilities and digital networks, systems that can be disrupted by war, weather or cyberattacks. The COVID-19 pandemic hinted at this fragility as supermarkets shelves emptied and hospitals were overwhelmed. Meanwhile, crises like Hurricane Katrina or the Syrian siege of Aleppo have shown how quickly urban order can collapse when systems fail. Are smart cities enough to deal with such situations? 

However, Leningrad also offers a counter-narrative: resilience is possible, even in the worst circumstances. It requires infrastructure (alternative food sources, decentralized energy), strong social networks (community organizations, mutual aid) and, perhaps most importantly, a shared civic identity that forces people to resist together rather than fracture. 


Siege rusia



War as a catalyst for urban transformation 

Examing the long-term impact of war on urban spaces reveals not only the immediate horrors of conflict but also the unexpected ways cities adapt, rebuild, and even redefine themselves in its aftermath. 

The most visible legacy of war is physical destruction. In Leningrad, incessant aerial and artillery bombardment reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. Basic infrastructure such as water pipes, power grids, streetcar lines were destroyed, making survival a daily struggle. But beyond the material damage, war corrodes the social fabric of a city. Institutions such as hospitals, schools, etc., meant to protect citizens collapsed under the pressure, leaving individuals to survive on their own.

guerra rusia



How much suffering can a city endure before it ceases to function as a society? Leningrad came close to that threshold. Yet, even in the depths of despair, the city did not fully collapse.  

 
"Famine has settled in Leningrad. Many people are becoming indifferent to the suffering of others, and some have even become predators...A wonderful spirit of cooperation began to blossom. The main thing was not to try to survive, but to keep one's own humanity intact. Those who isolated themselves from others would eventually collapse. Something else was coming to life: a deep desire to help each other in adversity" 


Paradoxically, war can also force cities to evolve in ways that peacetime complacency might never allow. The siege of Leningrad spurred innovations in survival—makeshift hospitals, communal kitchens, and improvised fuel sources—that kept the city alive. After the war, the reconstruction effort was not merely about restoring what was lost but reimagining the city’s future.

History forces us to acknowledge that some cities have emerged from conflict with unexpected gains. London’s postwar rebuilding led to revolutionary social housing projects. Rotterdam’s destruction birthed daring modernist experiments. Even Hiroshima, the ultimate symbol of annihilation, became a global beacon for peace and innovation



Post-war Leningrad (later St. Petersburg) saw the rebuilding of key landmarks, but also the redesign of public spaces to honor collective memory. Monuments to the siege’s victims, such as the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery, became sacred sites of remembrance, embedding the trauma into the city’s identity.


"Thousand died each day, and yet somehow Leningrado stayed alive... but those who sent us so much death made a fatal miscalculation. They underestimated our fierce hunger to live"


If there’s one takeaway for urbanists today, it’s this: A city’s survival depends less on its walls than on its people’s will to live together. So as we design “smart cities” and “sustainable hubs,” we’d do well to remember Leningrad’s darkest winter—when the only thing keeping the lights on wasn’t a power grid, but the stubborn refusal of ordinary humans to let their city die.

That’s resilience. Not in steel and concrete, but in solidarity. And in an age of climate crises and political fractures, we’ll need more of it than ever.

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