With the rapid bursts of blizzards and winds in Northeastern Connecticut this time of year, the battle against snow seems almost unwinnable. Even armed with a shovel, courage and a lot of caffeine, it’s incredibly difficult to clear away snow when it seemingly reappears quicker than you can shovel it away.
Over the past two weeks, snow fell, slowly melted, then once again froze into ice and became hidden under yet more snow. It’s certainly an unpleasant time to travel and navigate busy roadways or parking lots, and as a result, the chaos of the weather has led me to cover a very remarkable battle against the snow in a historical setting. This Week in History, we’ll uncover what it was like to make a track along the “Road of Life.”
First, let’s establish a geographic setting — the “Road of Life” was an ice bridge crossing the southern reaches of Lake Ladoga, Europe’s largest freshwater lake just east of the Karelian Isthmus. This area is along the border between Finland and Russia, which have both historically occupied territories north and south of the isthmus.
As harsh as they may seem, New England’s weather cycles are relatively tame. For several scientific/geological reasons, our occasional snow storms tend to be followed by fairly quick melting cycles, while those in Northeastern Europe linger and are much more intense. Especially considering the large bodies of water — both Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland — which encapsulate the area of Karelia, winds and ice storms are far more powerful.
It goes without saying that every year, snow storms and harsh winters burden on those living in the region. According to Karelia’s provincial website, “The mean temperature of the coldest month (February) is -8.8oC, of the warmest month (July) +16.3oC. The lake is normally covered in ice from February to May.”
This week in history, Lake Ladoga is frozen over with ice sheets. In the 1940s, that layer of ice would be a lifeline for millions living in Leningrads’ nearby city.
By 1941, the Nazis had commenced Operation Barbarossa, the largest offensive ever conducted in warfare. It is almost unimaginable that over 10,000,000 soldiers — including both Allied and Axis forces — engaged in brutal combat. In the context of a short newspaper column, no words can adequately present the destruction of the conflict, but by this week in history in 1942, the Axis had fought their way to the Karelian Isthmus and, since September, 1941, had been starving the populace living in Leningrad.
Often referred to as the 900 days, the Siege of Leningrad was staggering. Nazi forces wrapped around the east of the city and, in a few months, had severed all train lines that supplied its inhabitants after seizing the railway hub of Tikhvin.
Just as the Germans spread in the southern reaches of the isthmus, the Finnish army battered Soviet lines in the north as they re-engaged in the Continuation War against the Soviets, who had previously been unable to attain a clear victory in the Winter War in 1939. The Red Army was forced to retreat, and civilians had no choice but to face the Axis onslaught.
Leningrad itself was bombarded, decimated by bombing raids, and completely encircled. For the millions of starving inhabitants, there wasn’t any hope of escape, yet there was still hope. As Anne Sorokina, a child when the invasion broke out, stated in an interview with the historian James Clapperton, a harrowing description of spring 1942: “Why? Why do you think there was not an epidemic? Because we cleaned up the streets, and the snowdrifts were full of corpses!”
Aiding in the desperate acts of survival undertaken by children such as Sorokina, one route could perhaps still save Leningrad, the ice on Lake Ladoga, aptly called the “Road of Life.”
Officially referred to as “Military Automobile Highway No.101,” the ice bridge was a carefully designed route that cut across Lake Ladoga and connected with supply lines along its Eastern shores. It bears mentioning that “Road of Life” is not necessarily a very descriptive title for the road, as Clapperton writes, “In [the testimonies of survivors] the road of life becomes more akin to a road of death, a path to salvation which was blocked all too often by sudden and merciless shelling which rained down from the skies above.” Despite the threat of bombing and death due to German raids, even on the lake itself, the horror persisted further.
As individuals left their homes and self-constructed siege defenses behind, their fear only grew. “Evacuees were vulnerable to attack and at the same time experienced a sense of disorientation after they had been removed from the strange yet familiar routines of siege existence,” Clapperton adds.
Describing this history is incredibly difficult. I tend to look at the “Road of Life” as either a symbol of hope, despair or some messy mix of both. Yet, history itself isn’t so clearly defined along moral definitions.
To those who lived through it, such as Zinaida Shishova, it was simply the way life had progressed. She commented to Clapperton, “Now, our world itself has become the blockade. Now our world stretches no further than Leningrad.”
This week in history, on Feb. 20, 1942, the “Road of Life” shipped thousands of tons of material resources to Leningrad, supplied communication with the rest of the Soviet Union, shipped enough rations to feed the population, and evacuated as many as possible. The route would operate on the solid ice foundation throughout the remaining weeks of February as Leningrad’s lifeline.
And that wraps up This Week in History. It has been a while since I covered an event related to World War II, and although this week didn’t mark the founding of the “Road of Life,” it did mark one of its most pivotal weeks in operation. All interview lines within this article are from James Clapperton’s work at the University of Edinburgh, “The Siege of Leningrad and the ambivalence of the sacred: Conversations with survivors.” Clapperton’s work explores so much that I could not cover it here. For those who read in print, the link to the online version of this article at dailycampus.com.
I’d like to conclude with a quote from Aleksandr Cherapukhin, another Leningrad survivor; after traversing “The Road of Life,” he recalls, “At the other side, they gave us bread and hot kasha. But I remember people weeping because some of the children died. They began to eat, but their systems could not take it. Of course, this was awful. Guess what the only thing I took from
home was? An old gramophone player!” He pulled the record player on a sled behind him until his family reached safety.