The Leningrad Blockade Museum

Welcome to the museum that tells of the tragedy of a great city shaken by a war, about the life of the Arts within its encircled barricades and about a unique creative spirit that held as firmly as the 900-day siege of Leningrad. This extraordinary Blockade Museum was founded in 1967, at the initiative of one of the school's teachers, Yevgeny Lind, now a consultant. The specific idea of a museum dedicated to the Leningrad blockade emerged from a separate project with an objective to situate the city's cultural evolution within that of its troubled twentieth-century history. Lind himself is the son of the former Leningrad Youth Theatre director, killed during the war.

Emphasis here is placed on the collaboration between teachers and pupils - this is very much an educationally-based joint-project, open nevertheless to the general public. The schoolrooms themselves were relocated some ten years ago to a smaller site a half an hour's walk away. Projects to bring the school and its museum back together again exist, but these remain only projects: hope is slight that in the present economic climate funds might be found to realise such a plan. In the meantime, the museum staff are clinging onto the hope that the heating will stay on during the long Russian winter, and that one day hot water might even be available through a tap.

"This place is often full of children. They come and they act as guides, they study the exhibits and they meet the veterans. And all of the objects - all original documents - were given to our museum by people who had witnessed those terrible days; in the hope that the atrocities of those years will never be forgotten - and will never return." The manager of the museum, Olga Proutt, sits alongside "the" piano, a tired-looking Steinway that nevertheless holds pride of place in the midst of wall after wall of glass cases and free-standing exhibits. It turns out that Shostakovich played this piano. She continues: "Since we began thousands of priceless documents have been collected - letters, albums, drawings, scores, photos, costumes, instruments and many personal belongings... Little by little we've been able to gather together a unique collection relating to the activities of people in the Arts during the blockade. This includes everyone: the musicians, the actors, the museum curators, the cinema and the radio people - the hundreds of people who helped the Leningraders to survive, and who were still able to create despite the devastation."

"The Leningrad Blockade stretched to the extremes the resilience of the people, many of whom, according to medical science, ought not to have been able to walk - let alone work. But somehow they did work on, helping each other as best they could. Lack of protein led to the self-destruction of the body. It suffices to look at photographs of children from the time. A collection of pictures on display here at the Museum was taken at the city hospitals during the blockade. Many schools and kindergartens worked to provide shelter during the blockade. There were no homeless children in the city. The Museum houses many drawings and toys belonging to children from these kindergartens. A chubby little boy Shurik painted a square and wrote "This is a loaf of white bread - everything around it is war. I know nothing else." This 3-year old boy died later from starvation. His drawing is known around the world and is from our museum."