The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad,   ISBN:9780306812989

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The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad was published in 1969 to wide acclaim. It is today considered the definitive work on the siege of the Northern Palymyra "Leningrad (now know as St Petersburg)during World War II. Its author was Harrison E. Salisbury the late editor of The New York Times, Russian reporter and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Leningrad had been founded as St. Petersburg by Peter the Great in 1703. It was Peter's western window located in the far northern region of his vast land. It was in 1917 that Lenin began the Bolshevist revolution in Leningrad (then called Petrograd). It was Russia's Paris known for its beautiful buildings and such artists as Dostoevski, Pushkin, Diagheliv and others. It was in Leningrad that Shoshtakovich would write his immortal Seventh Symphony during the long siege.
The Nazis invaded Russia on June 22, 1941. Leningrad was surrounded by this invading army. The siege would not be lifted until January, 1943. In a city of over 3 million people in 1940 the city would see its numbers gradually reduced due to: aerial attacks by the Nazis, disease, starvation and battle. It is estimated that over 1 million persons died during the siege from September 1941 to January 1943. The citizens became starving wretches who had to eat wood pulp, seeds, family pets, wallpaper, leather and other unappetizing nourishment in order to continue to live.
Leningrad was a city disliked by Stalin. After the war was over he shot many of the governmental leaders of Leningrad in what was called "The Purge of Leningrad." The people of Leningrad are the heroes of this epic of human endurance and courage. They refused to surrender to the Nazis and kept their city alive even as they had to battle the cruel Stalin regime in Moscow. Stalin had once thought the best policy would be to destroy Leningrad by explosion and fire but this was not done. The Leningraders endured the longest siege of any major city in modern times. Their suffering was a crucifixion of body and soul. We affluent Americans can have no idea of the human misery endured by these hardy Russians of the greatest generation.
Salisbury did extensive research in Russia talking to persons who had survived the siege. His book is a monument to the survival of a great city and a heroic people. Harrowing reading and a classic historical account.

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It may seem a bit trivial, but I wonder how many of the reviewers down playing this book were even born in 1969 when THE 900 DAYS appeared. The book may be outdated, somewhat true, but Harrison did not have the advantage of the files available today. And he was a journalist, not a historian, and because he somewhat knew his material first hand it is a more personal, jounalistic account.

I recall the book being condensed prior to publication in Reader's Digest, reading it there I knew I had to have a copy. A hardcover still sits on my WWII shelves as does a hardcover copy of THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH. Both yet remain classics and though additional information and archives are now available, for me, that does not lessen the value of these two books published way back then. They were both judged as valuable additions to the WWII literature and for me remain so. To say these two books are without merit and dismiss them, is as silly as saying Babe Ruth doesn't matter because he belonged to a different era.

I for one am glad to still have both Salisbury and Shirer among the more current studies on Leningrad, Stalingrad, and WWII in general. Yes, I have the Beevor, the Evans, and the Jones volumes, but I also value Salisbury and Shirer as well. They were both milestone books when not too many American writers were issuing books on WWII. I suppose down playing the worth of Cornelius Ryan's WWII classics may be next, different generations can certainly have differing views.

Semper Fi.

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I have not as yet read the book though am looking forward to it. My father was in the siege and told me how lucky he felt when he got some dog meat to eat.

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The classic reputation of this book led me to expect more. Salisbury, a well-known liberal historian of the post-war era often willing to apologize for the Soviet regime, focuses on the first third of the siege, when the deprivation was greatest. Then he wraps up the last 600 days in a rush at the end of the book.

Writing at the time he did, when the Soviet regime was still strong, the memories of the war still fresh, and the Cold War still raging, I believe he lacked access to critical documentation (as he points out, much was destroyed during the "Leningrad affair" in the 50s) and may have been reticent to be more forthcoming due to geopolitical constraints.

Still, though, I think he could have told a more consistent story. This reads too much like a string of anecdotes.

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Straight up, the Siege of Leningrad lasted either 872 or 880 days, depending on whether you begin the count from the German capture of Mga or Shlissel'burg, not 900 days. I guess "The 880 Days" didn't sound so good as a book title, but in any case, deliberately mis-labeling a historical event is not a good way to write a history of that event. Harrison E. Salisbury's The 900 Days was a sensation when it first appeared in the West in 1969 since it was really the first major book in English that covered the epic siege of Leningrad in any detail. Furthermore, compared to the white-washed Soviet histories of the Great Patriotic War which attempted to conceal that over one million civilians died in Leningrad during the siege, Salisbury's book was brutally frank and honest. I remember reading this book in the early 1970s and considered it quite good. However, The 900 Days has not aged well and now nearly forty years after it first appeared, the value of this book has been reduced by over-reliance on too narrow a source base and the author's acceptance of Soviet-era falsehoods. When I re-read this book recently, I saw a journalistic account that is riddled in places with factual inaccuracies or mistakes, some of which it is clear that the author never bothered to check. Also, The 900 Days, like David Glantz's more recent books on Leningrad only focuses on the Soviet perspective, while failing to address the German or Finnish sides in any detail. Furthermore, the book really only covers the first year of the siege in any depth; the remaining two years are glossed over quickly in the final chapter. Nevertheless, The 900 Days is very well written in parts and it remains a `classic' in conveying the suffering endured by the people of Leningrad. Yet given its limitations, the book should now be viewed as an introduction to the siege, rather than a definitive history.

The 900 Days is divided into five parts. Part I, "The Night Without End," should have been called "the introduction without end," because the author spends an interminable 130 pages - nearly a quarter of the book - describing events before the German invasion. It is particularly annoying in the manner in which the author describes how a host of minor characters heard about rumors of war approaching and his depiction of Leningrad as a sun-filled `paradise' with women wearing diamonds and children eating ice-cream. No Stalinist-repression or Gulags here, please. Everything was happy, happy before the war. Part II, "The Summer War," comprises about 140 pages and is easily the best section in the book, detailing the German advance toward Leningrad and the desperate Soviet measures to erect hasty defenses. The role of Leningrad Party boss Andrei Zhdanov is particularly well covered (he had already been exorcised from post-war Soviet histories, so Salisbury's account may remain the definitive one on this character) and Salisbury is at pains to point out that Zhukov's brief role at Leningrad was less vital that the standard "the General-who-never-lost-a-battle" histories depict. Salisbury does mention German plans and actions from time to time, but mostly at high-level. Soviet units and some commanders are mentioned - the role of engineer Bychevsky is interesting - but there are very few front-line accounts. There are a significant number of factual errors - such as the frequent claim that the German paratroopers were frequently used in airborne drops in this sector (there were frequent rumors of this in July-August 1941 because of the German airborne attack on Crete in May 1941, but the author failed to `weed out' wartime rumors), that entire German units were destroyed, etc. He claims that the German commander for Leningrad was going to be "SS General Knut" when there was no such officer in the Wehrmacht or SS. At least Salisbury admits - unlike Soviet sources - that it isn't clear why the Germans failed to continue the offensive in September 1941 when Leningrad's defenses were crumbling.

Part III, "Leningrad in Blockade," covers the German encirclement of the city and also is well written, although marred by a number of factual errors. Part IV, "The Longest Winter," is really the heart of the book and this is the section that most readers will remember, with all its somber details about a civilian population starving to death en masse. The final section, "Breaking the Iron Ring," is only 50 pages long and covers the period summer 1942 to January 1944 in a twinkling (and skips over several Soviet disastrous offensives on the Volkhov). By this point, the author appeared to be running out of steam (or sources) and events are described briskly. In conclusion, the author estimates that one million or more civilians died in Leningrad during the siege, marking it as one of the most horrific experiences ever inflicted on a city(comparing it to Hiroshima and the 1870 siege of Paris).

First and foremost, The 900 Days is a journalistic account and the author has a predilection for `human interest' type anecdotes over narrative history, although some is provided. The author's focus on a group of Soviet `poets' (it seems like every other person is described as a poet) and `intellectuals' continues ad naseum throughout the book, but the author neglects that most of these favored `peacocks' were approved by the party (while other writers went to the Gulag). All in all, the 900 Days remains a classic of sorts and it remains the best depiction of the human tragedy in Leningrad, but as more historical material comes to light, its failings are becoming more evident with time.